json deserializing

Question

Just starting so any facilitation appreciated. Have an object serialized it to this starting segment:

[{"boo00":true,"lineItem":[{"bool00":true,"display":false,"extra00":"objectType","status":"","value":"recordType:A"}, {"bool00":true,"display":false,"extra00":"0","status":"","value":"UPC:1"},{...},{...}],"rowId":0,"str00":"hidden"},

The object has four elements: boo00 (boolean), lineIem (ArrayList), rowID (int), str00 (String)

I have this segment where I am trying to understand how to build back my object

String flatten = lines.toString();
JSONObject outer = JSONObject.fromObject(flatten);
Iterator itr04 = null;
for(itr04 = outer.entrySet().iterator(); itr04.hasNext();){
 Map.Entry entry = (Map.Entry) itr04.next();
 String key = (String)entry.getKey();
 System.out.println("key= "+key);
}

I am getting the following exception:

"net.sf.json.JSONException: A JSONObject text must begin with '{' at character 1 of []"

which at this point makes little sense to me because that is exactly how it starts.

Answer 1

Your JSON text begins with a square bracket: [, not a curly brace: {. The JSON string represents an array of objects.

Your outer should be a JSONArray.

• cp.: Thank you.If I can follow up here goes. How to I get the next "chunk"? JSONArray.size() shows three elements of my object type. Now since I know the structure how to I parse recursively into each? In this case where I have one object that contains some primitives and an ArrayList, how do get that as a separated chunk and parse that and iterate the list within?
• Hot Licks: @cp - If you know you have a JSONArray, you can iterate through it and extract each element. If you know that every element will be a JSONObject then you can just cast to that. If you're not sure, use instanceof to test the type of the array element before casting.

Answer 2

Since the Java JSON stuff is sort of brain dead, one thing you can do is concatenate "[" and "]" to the front and end of the string. Then you can always use JSONArray to read the string, and then do instanceof on each array element to find out what you have.