How to convert Invalid JSON String to JSONObject in Java?

Question

I have a string response like below which is a invalid json as it contains "obj13=".I want to convert it to a JSONObject(JAVA) and use it.Is there any good way to convert it to JSONObject without using String split operation.

obj13={
  players: [
    {
      name: "rocky",
      place: "brazil",
      age: "21",
    },
    {
      name: "andy",
      place: "New Zealand",
      age: "23",
    }
  ]
}

@HotLicks I can just use eval(String) in javascript to convert the mention string to objects and use them.I thought maybe there would be something equivalent in JAVA which can handle such json response. — Ansh
– Ansh, Commented Aug 29, 2013 at 17:01
You can always write your own JSON parser, or grab an open source one and modify it. Aside from that there is no way to do what you want. Java is not Javascript. — Hot Licks
– Hot Licks, Commented Aug 29, 2013 at 17:05
It should be noted that, even after the prefix is removed, what's left is not legal JSON, since the keys are not quoted. But I think many/most parsers can be made to tolerate this. — Hot Licks
– Hot Licks, Commented Aug 29, 2013 at 18:10
@HotLicks: And the extraneous commas on the last object property are not valid JSON either. — Cornelius Dol
– Cornelius Dol, Commented Aug 29, 2013 at 18:32

Cornelius Dol · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-11 21:57:13Z

1

This is, of course, JavaScript, not JSON. If you can, I would go back to the service provider and ask for a JSON response.

If the format of the string is consistent, you could just use:

json=json.substring(json.indexof('=')+1);

and then parse the result. Note that most good parsers should have an option to allow the keywords without quotes and to allow the extraneous commas (mine does, but unfortunately for you it doesn't create JSONObject's but is of a lower level - it's designed to construct the data-structure of the caller's choice, which could be a JSONObject if that's what you wanted but you'd have to code it).

If the result may or may not have the assignment, you may want to get a bit fancier and ensure that the non-whitespace characters before the '=' are valid for a JS identifier and the first non-whitespace after it is '{'.

edited Apr 11, 2017 at 21:57

answered Aug 29, 2013 at 17:02

Cornelius Dol

64.2k26 gold badges142 silver badges190 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

Hot Licks Over a year ago

There may be a parser somewhere that can be convinced that "=" should be treated as ":", so that if you wrapped the whole thing with {} it would parse. But it's just as easy to truncate the string as to wrap it.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

How to convert Invalid JSON String to JSONObject in Java?

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related