Keep double quotes when getting element from JSONArray

Question

I am using JsonPath to retrieve a value from a JSON file. The JSON file looks something like this:

[
  {
    "username": "John",
    "password": {
      "passwordValue": "passwordjohn",
      "secret_key": "123"
    }
  },
  {
    "username": "Nick",
    "password": {
      "passwordValue": "XXX",
      "secret_key": "ZZZ",
      "other_key": "YYY"
    }
  }
]

The JsonPath I am using is to retrieve the password from a particular user. Example:

fun getPassword() {
    val passwords: JSONArray = read(jsonFile, "\$.[?(@.name==\"John\")].password")
}

However, I found two obstacles. Firstly, I get back a net.minidev.json.JSONArray always, and the same path with appended [0] doesn't work.

Therefore, I try to get the only element from the JSONArray I get back, like this: credentials[0] . Unfortunately, this removes the double quotes in the field names, resulting in something like this:

{passwordValue: passwordjohn, secret_key: 123}

Which is impossible to work with.

I am looking for a way to get this back:

{"passwordValue": "passwordjohn", "secret_key": "123"}

Answer 1

What I ended up doing was to remove the [ and ] symbols from the beginning of the JSONArray after converting it to a String :

private fun JSONArray.toCredentialString(): String {
    val credentialString = this.toString()
    return credentialString.substring(1, credentialString.length - 1)
}

Any better solution is welcome.