How to parse a mulidimensional JSONString in Java

Question

I have a JSON-formatted String that has a singular key-value pair and a Map consisting of various String -typed keys and values within it, as follows:

"{"Key":"value","Map":{"key1":"val1","key2":"val2",...}}"

What I want to do is convert this String into a JSONObject (because I have other code that can easily interpret a JSONObject ). My first instinct was to use a parser ( JSONParser ) like the code snippet below...

JSONParser parser = new JSONParser();
Object o = new JSONParser();

o = (JSONObject) parser.parse(jsonStr);
JSONObject j = (JSONObject) o;

…but I got a ParseException instead of the convenient JSONObject . Why is that? Should I be treating the String differently, since it has a Map inside of it? Or am I doing something beyond the capabilities of a JSONParser ?

Answer 1

... but I got a ParseException instead of the convenient JSONObject . Why is that?

If you got a ParseException , that means that what you think is JSON is (in fact) not valid JSON. It is not a problem with your parsing code or the JSONObject parser. It is either a problem with the way the (supposed) JSON was produced in the first place, or with "channel" by which it reached the code that was supposed to parse it.

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Should I be treating the string differently, since it has a map inside of it?

Nope.

I note that your example code snippets are not sufficiently clear / complete to be able to tell exactly what you are doing. (In future, please provide a real MCVE rather than code snippets that don't make a lot of sense ¹ ... and certainly can't be compiled and run.) But there is nothing to indicate that that code is the cause of the ParseException .

Or am I doing something beyond the capabilities of a JSONParser ?

Nope. A JSON parser can cope with any JSON provided that it is well-formed .

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To fix this, you are going to need to work out why the parser thinks your JSON is bad, and work back to the root cause of the badness.

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^{1 - For example, why are you assigning a JSONParser object to a variable of type Object ?}