How to handle Dynamic JSON in Retrofit?

Question

I am using the retrofit efficient networking library, but I am unable to handle Dynamic JSON which contains single prefix responseMessage which changes to

Answer 1

Late to the party, but you can use a converter.

RestAdapter restAdapter = new RestAdapter.Builder()
    .setEndpoint("https://graph.facebook.com")
    .setConverter(new DynamicJsonConverter()) // set your static class as converter here
    .build();

api = restAdapter.create(FacebookApi.class);

Then you use a static class which implements retrofit's Converter:

static class DynamicJsonConverter implements Converter {

    @Override public Object fromBody(TypedInput typedInput, Type type) throws ConversionException {
        try {
            InputStream in = typedInput.in(); // convert the typedInput to String
            String string = fromStream(in);
            in.close(); // we are responsible to close the InputStream after use

            if (String.class.equals(type)) {
                return string;
            } else {
                return new Gson().fromJson(string, type); // convert to the supplied type, typically Object, JsonObject or Map
            }
        } catch (Exception e) { // a lot may happen here, whatever happens
            throw new ConversionException(e); // wrap it into ConversionException so retrofit can process it
        }
    }

    @Override public TypedOutput toBody(Object object) { // not required
        return null;
    }

    private static String fromStream(InputStream in) throws IOException {
        BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
        StringBuilder out = new StringBuilder();
        String line;
        while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
            out.append(line);
            out.append("\r\n");
        }
        return out.toString();
    }
}

I have written this sample converter so it returns the Json response either as String, Object, JsonObject or Map< String, Object >. Obviously not all return types will work for every Json, and there is sure room for improvement. But it demonstrates how to use a Converter to convert almost any response to dynamic Json.