Mapping JSON with varying object name

Question

I\'m quite new to JSON, and I\'ve looked around trying to work out what to do but not sure if I fully understand. I am making an external API call returning:

Answer 1

You should try to keep the keys the exact same if possible and change values, otherwise you'll have to change your JSON. Since JSON returns a value from the key, the value can change to anything it wants, but you'll be able to return it from the key. This doesn't work the other way around though.

Anyway to your question, you may have a little better luck using something like the GSON library, its pretty simple to use.

You can create the instance and pass it the JSON string:

Gson gson = new Gson();
JsonObject obj = gson.fromJson(JSON_DOCUMENT, JsonObject.class);

Then you can get certain elements from that now parsed JSON object.

For example, in your JSON string, username returns another JSON element, so you can do:

JsonObject username = obj.get("USERNAME").getAsJsonObject();

Then just repeat the same steps from there to get whatever value you need. So to get the name which returns "USERNAME2":

username.get("name").getAsString();

Coming together with:

JsonObject obj = gson.fromJson(JSON_DOCUMENT, JsonObject.class);
JsonObject username = obj.get("USERNAME").getAsJsonObject();
username.get("name").getAsString();