Question

I am working on an Android project and my json strings are a bit strange, all of the tutorials are showing that I need to parse an JSONArray but my JSON has no array name.
Heres an example json url. (my understanding says that there needs to be something like “article” before the [

 [
 ///Something should be here
 {
    "id": 15483,
    "title": "Bilbo Baggins is Cool",
    "permalink": "http://example.com/2012/12/03/",
     "content": "Hello World",
    "date": "2012-12-03 00:04:08",
    "author": "Bilbo Baggins",
    "thumbnail": "http://example.com/wp-        content/uploads/2012/12/DSC02971.jpg",
    "categories": [
        "News"
    ],
    "tags": [
        "LOTR",
        "One Ring",
        "Patch",
        "Police Department"
    ]
}
]

Like this example http://www.androidhive.info/2012/01/android-json-parsing-tutorial/
They have a tag at the beginning called “contacts” which lets him use a JSONArray to loop through all the contents and get the tags…
I am lost.
How can I parse this data? the tutorial code would not work as I cannot pull an array(as least i think).

Answer 1

 I am lost

First of all,I would like to tell you that in the example of androidhive,the root element of jsonstring is the jsonobject and the root element of jsonstring which you posted as question is the jsonarray.
Second of all,It’s not necessary to always have a name at the beginning of array to consume it and extract data from it.but yes,it surely requires in complex cases and it is good practice too.

How can I parse this data?

the root element is different,so you need to change the way of consuming the data,

in example of androidhive,

    // Creating JSON Parser instance
JSONParser jParser = new JSONParser();

// getting JSON string from URL
JSONObject json = jParser.getJSONFromUrl(url); //look at the left side of assignment operator.here result is being consumed in JSONObject

try {
    // Getting Array of Contacts
    contacts = json.getJSONArray(TAG_CONTACTS);

    // looping through All Contacts
    for(int i = 0; i < contacts.length(); i++){
        JSONObject c = contacts.getJSONObject(i);

        // Storing each json item in variable
        String id = c.getString(TAG_ID);
        String name = c.getString(TAG_NAME);
        String email = c.getString(TAG_EMAIL);
        String address = c.getString(TAG_ADDRESS);
        String gender = c.getString(TAG_GENDER);

        // Phone number is agin JSON Object
        JSONObject phone = c.getJSONObject(TAG_PHONE);
        String mobile = phone.getString(TAG_PHONE_MOBILE);
        String home = phone.getString(TAG_PHONE_HOME);
        String office = phone.getString(TAG_PHONE_OFFICE);

    }
} catch (JSONException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

the jsonstring which you posted as question can be consumed in JSONArray,

    // Creating JSON Parser instance
JSONParser jParser = new JSONParser();

// getting JSON string from URL
JSONArray json = jParser.getJSONFromUrl(url); //look at the left side of assignment operator.here result is being consumed in JSONArray

try {
    // looping through All data
    for(int i = 0; i < json.length(); i++){
        JSONObject c = json.getJSONObject(i);

        // Storing each item in variable
        String id = c.getString("id");
        String title= c.getString("title");
        String permalink= c.getString("permalink");
        String content= c.getString("content");

    }
} catch (JSONException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}