JSONArray cannot be converted to JSONObject in java

Question

I want to get an json object from this string coming from this JSON file:

{
"categories": {
 "category": [
 {
 "label": "Collaboration",
 "thumbnail": "http://mywebite.com/dfsv",
 "description": "...",
 "contents": {
 "@attributes": {
 "count": "79"
 }
 },
 "@attributes": {
 "id": "ZSQYN2"
 }
 },
 {
 "label": "Communication",
 "thumbnail": "http://mywebite.com/dfsv",
 "description": "...",
 "contents": {
 "@attributes": {
 "count": "43"
 }
 },
 "@attributes": {
 "id": "uGQ9MC"
 }
 }
 ],
 "@attributes": {
 "page": "12",
 "limit": "0",
 "count": "111",
 "lang": "en"
 }
}

}

I'm using this code :

JSONObject obj = new JSONObject(myString);

And I got this error message:

Value ... of type org.json.JSONArray cannot be converted to JSONObject

And if I do :

JSONArray obj = new JSONArray(myString);

I got this error message:

Value ... of type org.json.JSONObject cannot be converted to JSONArray

...

Do you have any idea ?

• Ivo: Are you sure myString is identical in both cases?
• cooow: Yes it's the same string

Answer 1

JSONArray and JSONObject are two different things, and should not be type compatible with one another, so these errors make sense. This is a JSONArray:

["foo", "bar", "baz"]

This is a JSONObject:

{ "foo" : "bar", "baz" : "quux" }

You may be looking for JSONElement, which in APIs like Google's GSON is the common superclass between both arrays and objects.

Under the Android JSON API they're also not type compatible.

Answer 2

I've finally found a solution!

I replaced

JSONObject obj = new JSONObject(myString);

by :

JSONObject obj = new JSONObject(myString.substring(myString.indexOf("{"), myString.lastIndexOf("}") + 1));

Answer found here

Hope it will help someone!