Android – How to Retrofit 2.0 parse nested JSON object

androidjsonretrofit

Our team decide to use Retrofit 2.0 and I'm doing some initial research on this library. As stated in the title, I want parse some nested JSON objects via Retrofit 2.0 in our Android app.

For example, here is a nested JSON object with the format:

{
        "title": "Recent Uploads tagged android",
        "link": "https://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/android/",
        "description": "",
        "modified": "2015-10-05T05:30:01Z",
        "generator": "https://www.flickr.com/",
        "items": [
        {
            "title": ...
            "link": ...
            "media": {"m":"This is the value I want to get:)"}
            "description": ...
            "published": ...
            "author": ...
            "author_id": ...
            "tags": ...
        },
        {...},
        ...
        ]
}

I'm interested in the JSON objects inside items array. I notice there are some posts about parsing nested JSON objects via Retrofit 1.X, but the latest Retrofit 2.0 APIs has changed a lot, which is confusing when adapting them to the new APIs.

Two possible solutions come into my mind:

  1. Write my own JSON converter factory which extends Converter.Factory.
  2. Return the raw response in a String type and parse it by myself. But it's not easy to get the raw response from Retrofit 2.0 according to my initial research. Retrofit 2.0 seems to insist in converting the response to something before pass it to me and Retrofit doesn't provide its own StringConverter. (I might be wrong~)

Update: We can actually get the raw response by setting JSONElement as the pojo for the HTTP API interface and use GSONConverter provided by Retrofit as the converter.

Best Answer

Assuming your complete JSON looks like 

{
  "title": "Recent Uploads tagged android",
  "link": "https://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/android/",
  "description": "",
  "modified": "2015-10-05T05:30:01Z",
  "generator": "https://www.flickr.com/",
  "items": [
    {
      "member1": "memeber value",
      "member2": "member value"
    },
    {
      "member1": "memeber value",
      "member2": "member value"
    }
  ]
}

So Pojo classes would be

public class MainPojo {
    private String title; 
    private String description;
    private String link;
    private String generator;
    private String modified;
    private ArrayList<Items> items;

    // Getters setters
}

public class Items {
    private String member2;
    private String member1;

    // Getters setters
}

Note : This is similar solution for your JSON. Members of Items.java can be changed if JSON has other keys.

Update for Pojo as new JSON

public class Items {
    private String tags;
    private String author;
    private String title;
    private String description;
    private String link;
    private String author_id;
    private String published;
    private Media media;

    // Getters and Setters
}

public class Media {
    private String m;
    // Getters and Setters
}
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