Android HTTP client Throwing exception

Question

I was trying to build an android app with a heroku server as the backend. I am trying to get JSON data as string through a heroku URL.

Here's the link to the json string

http://le-wild-pesit.herokuapp.com/peeps/

and the contents of the url is

[{"peep":{"age":null,"created_at":"2013-11-23T08:58:09Z","id":1,"name":null,"updated_at":"2013-11-23T08:58:09Z"}},{"peep":{"age":null,"created_at":"2013-11-23T08:59:30Z","id":2,"name":null,"updated_at":"2013-11-23T08:59:30Z"}}]

Here's my code:

//imports go here
public class JSONParser 
{

public String getJSONFromUrl(String url)
{

    InputStream inpstr = null;
    String result = "";
    HttpResponse response = null;

    // HTTP
    try ,
    {           
        HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        try
        {
            response = httpclient.execute(new HttpGet(url));
            }
        catch(Exception e) 
        {
            return "dafuq?!";
        }
        HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
        inpstr = entity.getContent();
    } 
    catch(Exception e) 
    {
        return "SHIT!";
    }

    // Code to get string from input stream

 return result;

}

}

When I run this code, The return I get is

"dafuq?!"

So I'm assuming I have trouble with

response = httpclient.execute(new HttpGet(url));

I've been tinkering with the code from 2 days and I haven't been able to figure out what's wrong. Please help me out.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Please make sure you have given INTERNET permission to your application, see this SO question on how to do that.

As an aside note, I would recommend adding some more descriptive error messages to your code, look into e.getMessage() for example.

Answer 2

First of all network operation should be done asynchronously, use AsyncTask for this. Secondly I recommend to use Log function for error handling. And here working code( getJSON() is the enter function ):

public void getJSON() {
    String[] strings = new String[]{"http://le-wild-pesit.herokuapp.com/peeps/"};
    new AsyncJSONTask().execute(strings);
}


public JSONArray getJSONFromUrl(String url) {
    String resultString;
    HttpResponse response;
    JSONArray jsonArray = null;
    try {
        HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        response = httpclient.execute(new HttpGet(url));
        HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
        resultString = EntityUtils.toString(entity);
        jsonArray = new JSONArray(resultString);
    } catch (Exception e) {
        Log.e("SOME_TAG", Log.getStackTraceString(e));
    }
    return jsonArray;
}

private class AsyncJSONTask extends AsyncTask<String, Void, JSONArray> {

    @Override
    protected JSONArray doInBackground(String... params) {
        String url = params[0];
        return getJSONFromUrl(url);
    }

    @Override
    protected void onPostExecute(JSONArray jsonArray) {
        super.onPostExecute(jsonArray);
        //Here you do your work with JSON
    }
}