JSONException: Value of type java.lang.String cann

Question

I have a JSON file with 2 JSON-Arrays in it: One Array for routes and one Array for sights.

A route should consist of several sights where the user gets navigated to. Unfortunately I am getting the error:

JSONException: Value of type java.lang.String cannot be converted to JSONObject

Here are my variables and the code that parses the JSON-File:

private InputStream is = null;
private String json = "";
private JSONObject jObj = null;

try {
    BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is, "iso-8859-1"), 8);
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    String line = null;
    while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
        sb.append(line + "\n");
    }
    is.close();
    // hier habe ich das JSON-File als String
    json = sb.toString();
    Log.i("JSON Parser", json);
} catch (Exception e) {
    Log.e("Buffer Error", "Error converting result " + e.toString());
}

// try parse the string to a JSON object
try {
    jObj = new JSONObject(json);
} catch (JSONException e) {
    Log.e("JSON Parser", "Error parsing data " + e.toString());
}

// return JSON String
return jObj;
}

Log.i("JSON Parser", json); shows me that at the beginning of the generated string there is a strange sign:

but the error happens here:

try {
    jObj = new JSONObject(json);
} catch (JSONException e) {
    Log.e("JSON Parser", "Error parsing data " + e.toString());
}

04-22 14:01:05.043: E/JSON Parser(5868): Error parsing data org.json.JSONException: Value //STRANGE SIGN HERE // of type java.lang.String cannot be converted to JSONObject

anybody has a clue on how to get rid of these signs in order to create the JSONObject?

Answer 1

The 3 characters at the beginning of your json string correspond to Byte Order Mask (BOM), which is a sequence of Bytes to identify the file as UTF8 file.

Be sure that the file which sends the json is encoded with utf8 (no bom) encoding.

(I had the same issue, with TextWrangler editor. Use save as - utf8 (no bom) to force the right encoding.)

Hope it helps.