Java HttpURLConnection Returns JSON

Question

I'm trying to make a http get request which returns a json response. I need some of the values from the json response to be stored in my session. I have this:

public String getSessionKey(){
    BufferedReader rd  = null;
    StringBuilder sb = null;
    String line = null;
    try {
         URL url = new URL(//url here);
         HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
         connection.setRequestMethod("GET");
         connection.connect();
         rd  = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(connection.getInputStream()));
          sb = new StringBuilder();

          while ((line = rd.readLine()) != null)
          {
              sb.append(line + '\n');
          }
          return sb.toString();

     } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
     } catch (ProtocolException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
     } catch (IOException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
     }

    return "";
}

This returns the JSON in a string:

{ "StatusCode": 0, "StatusInfo": "Processed and Logged OK", "CustomerName": "Mr API"}

I need to store StatusCode and CustomerName in the session. How do I deal with returning JSON with java?

Thanks

Answer 1

Use a JSON library. This is an example with Jackson:

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();

JsonNode node = mapper.readTree(connection.getInputStream());

// Grab statusCode with node.get("StatusCode").intValue()
// Grab CustomerName with node.get("CustomerName").textValue()

Note that this will not check the validity of the returned JSON. For this, you can use JSON Schema. There are Java implementations available.