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

Try custom deserialisation using gson-converter as below(updated answer for Retrofit 2.0)

Create three models as shown below

ResponseWrapper

public class ResponseWrapper {

    @SerializedName("applicationType")
    @Expose
    private String applicationType;
    @SerializedName("responseMessage")
    @Expose
    private Object responseMessage;

    public String getApplicationType() {
        return applicationType;
    }

    public void setApplicationType(String applicationType) {
        this.applicationType = applicationType;
    }

    public Object getResponseMessage() {
        return responseMessage;
    }

    public void setResponseMessage(Object responseMessage) {
        this.responseMessage = responseMessage;
    }

}

ResponseMessage

public class ResponseMessage extends ResponseWrapper {

@SerializedName("surname")
@Expose
private String surname;
@SerializedName("forename")
@Expose
private String forename;
@SerializedName("dob")
@Expose
private String dob;
@SerializedName("refNo")
@Expose
private String refNo;
@SerializedName("result")
@Expose
private String result;

public String getSurname() {
    return surname;
}

public void setSurname(String surname) {
    this.surname = surname;
}

public String getForename() {
    return forename;
}

public void setForename(String forename) {
    this.forename = forename;
}

public String getDob() {
    return dob;
}

public void setDob(String dob) {
    this.dob = dob;
}

public String getRefNo() {
    return refNo;
}

public void setRefNo(String refNo) {
    this.refNo = refNo;
}

public String getResult() {
    return result;
}

public void setResult(String result) {
    this.result = result;
}

}

ResponseString

public class ResponseString extends ResponseWrapper {

}

UserResponseDeserializer(custom deserialiser)

public class UserResponseDeserializer implements JsonDeserializer {
@Override
public ResponseWrapper deserialize(JsonElement json, Type typeOfT, JsonDeserializationContext context) throws JsonParseException {


        if (((JsonObject) json).get("responseMessage") instanceof JsonObject){
            return new Gson().fromJson(json, ResponseMessage.class);
        } else {
            return new Gson().fromJson(json, ResponseString.class);
        }

}
}

Retrofit 2.0 Implementation

Gson userDeserializer = new GsonBuilder().setLenient().registerTypeAdapter(ResponseWrapper.class, new UserResponseDeserializer()).create();


    Retrofit retrofit = new Retrofit.Builder()
            .baseUrl("base_url")
            .addConverterFactory(GsonConverterFactory.create(userDeserializer))
            .build();


    UserService request = retrofit.create(UserService.class);
    Call call1=request.listAllUsers();

    call1.enqueue(new Callback() {
        @Override
        public void onResponse(Call call, Response response) {
            ResponseWrapper responseWrapper=response.body();
            Log.i("DYNAMIC RESPONSE", String.valueOf(response.body().getResponseMessage()));
        }

        @Override
        public void onFailure(Call call, Throwable t) {
        }
    });

Libraries Used

compile 'com.squareup.retrofit2:retrofit:2.3.0'

compile 'com.squareup.retrofit2:converter-gson:2.3.0'

***** Previous Answer (above answer is more recommended one) *****

Change your pojo like this

public class TrackerRefResponse {

  private String applicationType;
  private Object responseMessage;

  public Object getResponseMessage() {
  return responseMessage;
  }

  public void setResponseMessage(Object responseMessage) {
  this.responseMessage = responseMessage;
 }
}

and change retrofit's onResponse like this

 @Override
public void onResponse(Response response) {
    if (response.isSuccess()) {
        if (response.getResponseMessage() instanceof String)
            {
            handleStringResponse();
         }
        else 
            {
            handleObjectResponse();
         }
    }
}

you may also check this post for more details about dynamic json parsing