Parsing a JSON Array from HTTP Response in Java

Question

I am using the HTTP client from Apache, and am trying to parse a JSON array from the response I get from the client.

This is an example of the JSON I receive back.

 [{"created_at":"2013-04-02T23:07:32Z","id":1,"password_digest":"$2a$10$kTITRarwKawgabFVDJMJUO/qxNJQD7YawClND.Hp0KjPTLlZfo3oy","updated_at":"2013-04-02T23:07:32Z","username":"eric"},{"created_at":"2013-04-03T01:26:51Z","id":2,"password_digest":"$2a$10$1IE6hR4q5jQrYBtyxMJJBOGwSPQpg6m5.McNDiSIETBq4BC3nUnj2","updated_at":"2013-04-03T01:26:51Z","username":"Sean"}]

I am using http://code.google.com/p/json-simple/ as my json library.

        HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("SERVERURL");
        httppost.setEntity(input);
        HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
        BufferedReader rd = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(response.getEntity().getContent()))

        Object obj=JSONValue.parse(rd.toString());
        JSONArray finalResult=(JSONArray)obj;
        System.out.println(finalResult);

Here is the code I have tried but it doesn't work. I am not really sure what to do. Any help is appreciated, thanks.

Solution

BufferedReader rd = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(response.getEntity().getContent())) Object obj=JSONValue.parse(rd.toString());

rd.toString() would not give you the content of that InputStream corresponding to response.getEntity().getContent(). It instead gives the toString() representation of a BufferedReader object. Try printing it on your console to see what it is.

Instead you should read the data from the BufferedReader as follows:

StringBuilder content = new StringBuilder();
String line;
while (null != (line = br.readLine()) {
    content.append(line);
}

Then, you should parse the content to get the JSON array.

Object obj=JSONValue.parse(content.toString());
JSONArray finalResult=(JSONArray)obj;
System.out.println(finalResult);