Issue parsing JSON Array out of a string

Question

So, I'm working on an Android app that will read a JSON response from a remote server (running PHP). Everything works fine until I try to read the array data item from the larger JSON string. Below is the error Eclipse throws when it tries to parse the object into the array. Anyone have any ideas? JSONLint validates that this array is valid JSON, so I'm not sure what the issue is here.
Note - it DOES let me parse this element as a JSONObject, but I'm not clear how to get it from that to an associative array like I need. I do see that JSONObject has a method ToJSONArray, but it requires a list of array keys, but those are variable and I won't know what they are until I parse the damn array! Any assistance is appreciated.

    public JSONArray parseJson(String jsonString) {

    JSONArray data = new JSONArray();
    try {
        JSONObject json = new JSONObject(jsonString);
        success = json.getBoolean("success");
        object = json.getString("object");
        message = json.getString("message");

        data = json.getJSONArray("data")


    } catch (JSONException e) {
        Log.e("ServerResponse::parseJson", e.getMessage());
         e.printStackTrace();
        success = false;
        message = "Error parsing return JSON data. " + e.getCause();
    }
    return data;
}

Here's the JSON array I'm trying to parse:

{
"1": {
    "country_of_origin": "US",
    "genre": "Action",
    "date_finished": "2005-06-17",
    "dtimemod": "2009-12-03 14:29:59",
    "netflix_rating": "82",
    "table": "movies",
    "rotten_rating": "82",
    "format": "Live Action",
    "date_begun": "2005-06-17",
    "id": "3055",
    "dtimecre": "2009-12-03 14:29:59",
    "name": "Batman Begins",
    "user_id": "mcenci",
    "year": "2005",
    "actors": "Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Ken Watanabe, Katie Holmes, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Sara Stewart, Richard Brake, Gus Lewis",
    "rating": "100",
    "extra_info": "Runtime: 140 min\n",
    "public": "0",
    "notes": "",
    "key": "103",
    "genre2": "Sci-Fi"
}
}

"Below is the error Eclipse throws" <- you forgot to actually include that. — Daniel Fischer
– Daniel Fischer, Commented Apr 12, 2013 at 20:23

digitaljoel · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-12 20:41:45Z

1

Your JSON is not an array.

It's an object which contains a single object named "1", which then contains many properties. In JSON, an array begins with [ and ends with ] For instance:

{ "myStringArray" : [ "adsf", "qwer" ] }

or

{ "myObjectArray" : [ 
  { "prop1" : "asdf", "prop2" : "qwer" },
  { "prop1" : "zxcv", "prop2" : "qwer" }
]}

Going further, I would suggest not using the JSONObject/JSONArray stuff and use a capable library. I prefer Jackson but when I evaluated it I found it was just too big for me to feel good about putting it in an android project so I went with GSON.

With a better library you could map the object to a Map<String, Object>, or if the sample you gave is indicative of what your data will always be like you could map it to Map<String, String>

edited Apr 12, 2013 at 20:41

answered Apr 12, 2013 at 20:23

digitaljoel

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drunkenRabbit · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-12 20:29:53Z

0

your JSONObject is actually an array where the first Object key is 1. Try:

JSONObject json = new JSONArray(jsonString).getJSONObject(0); 
// or JSONObject json = new JSONObject(jsonString).getJSONObject("1");
success = json.getBoolean("success");
object = json.getString("object");
message = json.getString("message");

data = json.getJSONArray("data")

Does that work ?

answered Apr 12, 2013 at 20:29

drunkenRabbit

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3 Comments

mcenci Over a year ago

Kind of... I can use json.getJSONObject("data").getJSONObject("1") to get the first element of my array. But that requires that I know what the key name is - i.e. 1... the keys in this case are actually database unique identifiers which I wouldn't know until after. There's no way to just create an associative array without knowing what the keys are called?

drunkenRabbit Over a year ago

JSONObject has a method .keys() which will return an enumeration of keys in the Object you can use.

drunkenRabbit Over a year ago

Glad to help :) If your problem is solved, accepting an answer would help others that find this question.

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