Retrofit2:Expected BEGIN_ARRAY but was STRING at line 1 column 268 path $[0].images

Question

I know this is not the first time someone asking about this problem but with Retrofit2 I can't find the right solution to my problem.

I have an object that contains a list of String. when I want to convert JSON response to my object all other fields are ok but I got this error for converting the list of string to my list:

Retrofit2: Expected BEGIN_ARRAY but was STRING at line 1 column 268 path $[0].images

This is my API:

@POST("/cp/api/")// get list of products
    Call<List<Product>> Get_Special_Products(@Body Object request);

My Retrofit setting:

public Retrofit Store_retrofit(OkHttpClient client) {
        return new Retrofit.Builder()
                .baseUrl(Urls.Sotre_Base_Url)
                .client(client)
                .addConverterFactory(GsonConverterFactory.create())
                .build();
    }

My Object:

public class Product implements Serializable {
    @SerializedName("id")
    private int id;
    @SerializedName("user_id")
    private int user_id;
    @SerializedName("cat_id")
    private int cat_id;
    @SerializedName("title")
    private String title;
    @SerializedName("description")
    private String description;
    @SerializedName("image")
    private String image;
    @SerializedName("images")
    private List<String> images;
public int getUser_id() {
        return user_id;
    }

    public int getCat_id() {
        return cat_id;
    }

    public String getTitle() {
        return title;
    }

    public String getDescription() {
        return description;
    }

    public String getImage() {
        return image;
    }
public List<String> getImages() {
        return images;
    }
}

and this a part of JSON that cause the error for image:

images:[
    "1487801544.jpg","1487801544.jpg","1487801544.jpg"
]

Answer 1

This mostly happens when your API service can not convert array to json and retrofit reads it as String . call to your API service provider to solve converting array to json :) for example

"images": "[\"1487801544.jpg\",\"1487801544.jpg\",\"148801544.jpg\"]"

retrofit read above as String and should be change as below :

"images": [
      "1487801544.jpg",
      "1487801544.jpg",
      "1487801544.jpg"
    ]