GSON JsonElement to String

Question

I am having some trouble converting an JsonElement to string. I am using the getAsString() method call but i keep getting an Unsupported Operation Exception. I checked the output of the get I am calling and it seems correct.

Here is my code, Sorry for the poor naming conventions:

JsonParser jp2 = new JsonParser();
JsonObject root2 = jp2.parse(getAllEventsResults.get_Response()).getAsJsonObject();
JsonArray items2 = root2.get("items").getAsJsonArray();

for(int i=0; i<items2.size(); i++){
    JsonObject item = items2.get(i).getAsJsonObject();
    System.out.println(item.get("start").getAsString());}

The weirdest part of this is that I do the same exact thing in above with this code:

JsonParser jp = new JsonParser();
JsonObject root = jp.parse(getAllCalendarsResults.get_Response()).getAsJsonObject();
JsonArray items = root.get("items").getAsJsonArray();
JsonObject firstItem = items.get(0).getAsJsonObject();
String firstCalId = firstItem.get("id").getAsString();

Answer 1

Is it possible that item.get("start") is a JsonNull?

do check first:

item.get("start").isJsonNull() ? "" : item.get("start").getAsString();