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JSON in Android - Tutorial

Lars Vogel

Version 1.0

17.06.2011

Revision History
Revision 0.1 07.04.2011 Lars
Vogel
Created
Revision 0.2 - 1.0 08.04.2011 - 17.06.2011 Lars
Vogel
bugfixes and enhancements

JSON with Android

This article describes how to process JSON within Android. It is based on Eclipse 3.6, Java 1.6 and Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread).


Table of Contents

1. Android and JSON
1.1. Android and JSON
1.2. JSON Example: Twitter
2. Reading JSON
3. Write JSON
4. Thank you
5. Questions and Discussion
6. Links and Literature
6.1. Source Code
6.2. Android Resources
6.3. vogella Resources

1. Android and JSON

1.1. Android and JSON

JSON is a very condense data exchange format. Android includes the json.org libraries which allow to work easily with JSON files.

1.2. JSON Example: Twitter

Twitter is a great source for JSON. You can just call a URI and retrieve JSON. Here are some examples:

Table 1. Twitter URIs

URI Description
http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/vogella.json Get the timeline of user vogella.
http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=android Search for the term "android" on Twitter.
http://twitter.com/users/show/vogella.json Returns the user data of user vogella.


Please note that some URIs return a JSONObject object while others return a JSONArray.

2. Reading JSON

Create a new Android project "de.vogella.android.twitter.json" with the package "de.vogella.android.twitter.json" and the activity "ParseJSON".

Create the following coding for the activity. This will download the twitter feed for the user http://twitter.com/vogella and write the number of entries and the text messages to the Android log file.

package de.vogella.android.twitter.json;

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;

import org.apache.http.HttpEntity;
import org.apache.http.HttpResponse;
import org.apache.http.StatusLine;
import org.apache.http.client.ClientProtocolException;
import org.apache.http.client.HttpClient;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpGet;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient;
import org.json.JSONArray;
import org.json.JSONObject;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.util.Log;

public class ParseJSON extends Activity {
  
/** Called when the activity is first created. */
@Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); String readTwitterFeed = readTwitterFeed(); try { JSONArray jsonArray = new JSONArray(readTwitterFeed); Log.i(ParseJSON.class.getName(), "Number of entries " + jsonArray.length()); for (int i = 0; i < jsonArray.length(); i++) { JSONObject jsonObject = jsonArray.getJSONObject(i); Log.i(ParseJSON.class.getName(), jsonObject.getString("text")); } } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } public String readTwitterFeed() { StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder(); HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient(); HttpGet httpGet = new HttpGet("http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/vogella.json"); try { HttpResponse response = client.execute(httpGet); StatusLine statusLine = response.getStatusLine(); int statusCode = statusLine.getStatusCode(); if (statusCode == 200) { HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity(); InputStream content = entity.getContent(); BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(content)); String line; while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) { builder.append(line); } } else { Log.e(ParseJSON.class.toString(), "Failed to download file"); } } catch (ClientProtocolException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } return builder.toString(); } }

To run this example assign the uses-permission to your AndroidManifest.xml for "android.permission.INTERNET".

3. Write JSON

Writing JSON is very simple. Just create the JSONObject or JSONArray and use the toString() method.

public void writeJSON() {
  JSONObject object = new JSONObject();
  try {
    object.put("name", "Jack Hack");
    object.put("score", new Integer(200));
    object.put("current", new Double(152.32));
    object.put("nickname", "Hacker");
  } catch (JSONException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
  }
  System.out.println(object);
} 

4. Thank you

Please help me to support this article:

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5. Questions and Discussion

Before posting questions, please see the vogella FAQ. If you have questions or find an error in this article please use the www.vogella.com Google Group. I have created a short list how to create good questions which might also help you.

6. Links and Literature

6.1. Source Code

Source Code of Examples

6.3. vogella Resources

vogella Training Android and Eclipse Training from the vogella team

Android Tutorial Introduction to Android Programming

GWT Tutorial Program in Java and compile to JavaScript and HTML

Eclipse RCP Tutorial Create native applications in Java

JUnit Tutorial Test your application

Git Tutorial Put everything you have under distributed version control system