Question

Ran into a situation where am not sure how to handle it.

I have json data that comes from a server; for example:(am just posting part of the json, so, yes, the json is valid)

    "wall_id": 889149,
    "poster_image_thumbnail": "http:\/\/www.mface.me\/images\/avatar\/thumb_62441559ddb1dda7513d0f94.jpg",
    "post_type": "profile",
    "post_content": [{
        "text": "",
        "images_count": 1,
        "images": ["https:\/\/fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net\/hphotos-ak-ash4\/227408_475848819113499_663318592_n.jpg"]
    }]

Created a class to store this json data

public class feedFormat{
    Integer wall_id;
    String poster_image_thumbnail;
    String post_type;
    String post_content;
}

There are times when post_content can be empty or an array as the example above. I have declared post_content as String in feedFormat. This is obviously throwing a cast exception (Converting array to string?).

I was expecting JSONObject to read it as a string and later convert it into an array from there, but does’nt seem to go that way.

How can i dynamically handle a string or an array? if it is an array, i need to break it down.

I am porting this app from IOS to android, there is a “id” object in IOS that can be of any class. I check if the class is a NSSTring or NSArray and take it from there. Here in Java, am not sure how to handle it.

Any suggestions are highly appreciated

Answer 1

If your JSON array is empty, it will be like that :

"post_content": []

It will then remain an array, with the particularity of being 0-sized.

Then I suggest you parse directly your JSON array into a appropriate data structure, whatever the size, like an ArrayList> for example. You will then be able to go through all the items of your JSON array, and for each item, add a new HashMap in your arraylist. Every hashmap will contain there pairs of key values.

However, if I understand well your JSON, it seems that it will be always an array of three elements, the third element being itself a array, which size is given bu the attribute images_count. This is not very good, your JSON structure should be :

"post_content": {
    "text": "",
    "images": [
        "https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/227408_475848819113499_663318592_n.jpg"
    ]
}

Since images is an array, you can easily get its size.