Parsing JSONObject having dynamic key

Question

I have following JSON as response from my server. At first, I thought, it was invalid JSON but after validating it, it seems to be correct:

JOSN: {
    \"cat         


        

Answer 1

If I were you and I'm sure that the keys are a sequence of numbers starting with 1, I would do the following:

Map results = new Hashtable<>();

    try {
        //The response is your JSON as a string
        JSONObject obj = new JSONObject(response);
        JSONObject categories = obj.getJSONObject("categories");

        int counter = 1;
        //Breakable infinite loop, will be broken when you try to get non existing item
        while(true){
            results.put(counter, categories.getString(counter+""));
        }
    } catch (JSONException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
//Return the map that contain the results
 return results;

Or using Iterator as the following example :

Map results = new Hashtable<>();

    try {
        //The response is your JSON as a string
        JSONObject obj = new JSONObject(response);
        JSONObject categories = obj.getJSONObject("categories");

        Iterator iter = categories.keys();
        while (iter.hasNext()) {
            String key = iter.next();
            results.put(key, categories.getString(key+""));
        }
    } catch (JSONException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    //Return the map that contain the results
    return results;

You can also create an ArrayList and add the values to it instead of adding them to a HashTable