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

I know I am very very late to the party. I had a similar issue and just solved it like this:

public class TrackerRefResponse {

    private String applicationType;
    // Changed to Object. Works fine with String and array responses.
    private Object responseMessage;

}

I literally just changed to type to Object. I chose this approach because only one field in the response was dynamic (for me, my response was way more complicated), so using a converter would have made life difficult. Used Gson to work with the Object from there, depending on if it was a String or Array value.

Hope this helps someone looking for a simple answer :).

Answer 2

The accepted answer seemed over complicated for me, I solve it this way:

Call<ResponseBody> call = client.request(params);
call.enqueue(new Callback<ResponseBody>() {
    @Override
    public void onResponse(Response<ResponseBody> response) {
        if (response.isSuccess()) {
            Gson gson = new Gson();
            ResponseBody repsonseBody = response.body().string();
            if (isEmail) {
                EmailReport reports = gson.fromJson(responseBody, EmailReport.class);
            } else{
                PhoneReport reports = gson.fromJson(repsonseBody, PhoneReport.class);
            }
        }
    }
    @Override
    public void onFailure(Throwable t) {
        Log.e(LOG_TAG, "message =" + t.getMessage());
    }
});

This is just an example in attempt to show you how you can use different model.

The variable isEmail is just a boolean for your condition to use the appropriate model.

Answer 3

In addition to what you told -

Use Callback Then you can retrieve the fields using regular get method. For more information, go through the javadoc of gson.

http://google-gson.googlecode.com/svn/tags/1.2.3/docs/javadocs/com/google/gson/JsonObject.html

Answer 4

I too ran of this issue. but i am not sure if this was your case , (i am using Retrofit2)

on my case i need to handle error, and success messages.

On Success

{
"call_id": 1,
"status": "SUCCESS",
"status_code": "SUCCESS",
"result": {
    "data1": {
        "id": "RFP2UjW7p8ggpMXzYO9tRg==",
        "name": "abcdef",
        "mobile_no": "96655222",
        "email": ""
    },
    "data2": [
        {
            "no": "12345"
        },
        {
            "no": "45632"
        }
    ]
}
}

On Error,

{
"call_id": 1,
"status": "FAILED",
"status_code": "NO_RECORDS",
"error": {
    "error_title": "xxx",
    "error_message": "details not found"
}
}

for this i just created another POJO Error,

public class ValidateUserResponse {
@SerializedName("call_id")
public String callId;
@SerializedName("status")
public String status;
@SerializedName("status_code")
public String statusCode;
@SerializedName("result")
public ValidateUserResult result;
@SerializedName("error")
public Error error;
}

Error.java

public class Error {
@SerializedName("error_title")
public String errorTitle;
@SerializedName("error_message")
public String errorMessage;
}

ValidateUser.java

public class ValidateUserResult {

@SerializedName("auth_check")
public String authCheck;
@SerializedName("data1")
public Data1 data1;
@SerializedName("data2")
public List<Data2> data2;
}

in the above case if the result key on json contains data1,data2 then the ValidateUserResult.java get initialised. if error then the Error.java class get initialized.

Answer 5

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<ResponseWrapper> {
@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<ResponseWrapper> call1=request.listAllUsers();

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

        @Override
        public void onFailure(Call<ResponseWrapper> 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<TrackerRefResponse > 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

Answer 6

If it was not possible to change the backend API, I would consider the following variants (if Gson is used to convert JSON).

1. We can use Gson type adapters to create a custom adapter for ResponseMessage type that dynamically decides how to parse the inoming JSON (using something like if (reader.peek() == JsonToken.STRING)).

2. Put some meta information describing the response type into an HTTP header and use it to determine what type information must be fed to Gson instance.