How to convert a JSON String to a JSON Object (Gson) in Java?

Question

I am consuming an external API to which the response body is a String in JSON format. I am using Gson to parse the String into a JSON Object. However, I get the following error when trying to display the object in browser.

SyntaxError: JSON.parse: unexpected character at line 1 column 1 of the JSON data

Here is my code:

Controller

    @RequestMapping("/player")
public JsonArray displayPlayer() throws Exception{


    String player = "PacSnackz";

    smite.createSession();

    String test = smite.getPlayer(player);

    JsonArray playerObj = new JsonParser().parse(test).getAsJsonArray();

    return playerObj;

}

Smite Class

      public String getPlayer(String player) throws Exception {
        if (!isSessionValid() && !createSession()) return "session null";
        return getURL(combine(new String[] {
                baseURL + "getplayer" + responseFormat,
                devID,
                getSignature("getplayer"),
                sessionID,
                getTimestamp(),
                player
        }, "/"));
}

This is what the JSON String looks like:

JSON String

[{"Avatar_URL":"","Created_Datetime":"8\/16\/2016 4:30:14 AM","Id":9993055,"Last_Login_Datetime":"4\/23\/2018 8:47:56 PM","Leaves":3,"Level":17,"Losses":19,"MasteryLevel":1,"Name":"PacSnackz","Personal_Status_Message":"","Rank_Stat_Conquest":0,"Rank_Stat_Duel":0,"Rank_Stat_Joust":0,"RankedConquest":{"Leaves":0,"Losses":0,"Name":"League","Points":0,"PrevRank":0,"Rank":0,"Rank_Stat_Conquest":null,"Rank_Stat_Duel":null,"Rank_Stat_Joust":null,"Season":0,"Tier":0,"Trend":0,"Wins":0,"player_id":null,"ret_msg":null},"RankedDuel":{"Leaves":0,"Losses":0,"Name":"Duel","Points":0,"PrevRank":0,"Rank":0,"Rank_Stat_Conquest":null,"Rank_Stat_Duel":null,"Rank_Stat_Joust":null,"Season":0,"Tier":0,"Trend":0,"Wins":0,"player_id":null,"ret_msg":null},"RankedJoust":{"Leaves":0,"Losses":0,"Name":"Joust","Points":0,"PrevRank":0,"Rank":0,"Rank_Stat_Conquest":null,"Rank_Stat_Duel":null,"Rank_Stat_Joust":null,"Season":0,"Tier":0,"Trend":0,"Wins":0,"player_id":null,"ret_msg":null},"Region":"North America","TeamId":0,"Team_Name":"","Tier_Conquest":0,"Tier_Duel":0,"Tier_Joust":0,"Total_Achievements":28,"Total_Worshippers":510,"Wins":35,"ret_msg":null}]

I am using Spring Boot Java and Google's Gson library. I have looked into Jackson as well with no luck either.

Answer 1

I figured out the answer. The trick was to set Player to an array. For other objects I had I used a for loop to return multiple objects. For this example it is set to 0 since there is only one player.

@RequestMapping("/player")
public Player displayPlayer() throws Exception{


    String player = "PacSnackz";

    smite.createSession();

    String test = smite.getPlayer(player);

    Gson gson = new Gson();

    Player[] playerObj = gson.fromJson(test, Player[].class);

    return playerObj[0];



}