Using JSON File in Android App Resources

Question

Suppose I have a file with JSON contents in the raw resources folder in my app. How can I read this into the app, so that I can parse the JSON?

Answer 1

See openRawResource. Something like this should work:

InputStream is = getResources().openRawResource(R.raw.json_file);
Writer writer = new StringWriter();
char[] buffer = new char[1024];
try {
    Reader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is, "UTF-8"));
    int n;
    while ((n = reader.read(buffer)) != -1) {
        writer.write(buffer, 0, n);
    }
} finally {
    is.close();
}

String jsonString = writer.toString();

Answer 2

Kotlin is now official language for Android, so I think this would be useful for someone

val text = resources.openRawResource(R.raw.your_text_file)
                                 .bufferedReader().use { it.readText() }

Answer 3

I used @kabuko's answer to create an object that loads from a JSON file, using Gson, from the Resources:

package com.jingit.mobile.testsupport;

import java.io.*;

import android.content.res.Resources;
import android.util.Log;

import com.google.gson.Gson;
import com.google.gson.GsonBuilder;


/**
 * An object for reading from a JSON resource file and constructing an object from that resource file using Gson.
 */
public class JSONResourceReader {

    // === [ Private Data Members ] ============================================

    // Our JSON, in string form.
    private String jsonString;
    private static final String LOGTAG = JSONResourceReader.class.getSimpleName();

    // === [ Public API ] ======================================================

    /**
     * Read from a resources file and create a {@link JSONResourceReader} object that will allow the creation of other
     * objects from this resource.
     *
     * @param resources An application {@link Resources} object.
     * @param id The id for the resource to load, typically held in the raw/ folder.
     */
    public JSONResourceReader(Resources resources, int id) {
        InputStream resourceReader = resources.openRawResource(id);
        Writer writer = new StringWriter();
        try {
            BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(resourceReader, "UTF-8"));
            String line = reader.readLine();
            while (line != null) {
                writer.write(line);
                line = reader.readLine();
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            Log.e(LOGTAG, "Unhandled exception while using JSONResourceReader", e);
        } finally {
            try {
                resourceReader.close();
            } catch (Exception e) {
                Log.e(LOGTAG, "Unhandled exception while using JSONResourceReader", e);
            }
        }

        jsonString = writer.toString();
    }

    /**
     * Build an object from the specified JSON resource using Gson.
     *
     * @param type The type of the object to build.
     *
     * @return An object of type T, with member fields populated using Gson.
     */
    public <T> T constructUsingGson(Class<T> type) {
        Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().create();
        return gson.fromJson(jsonString, type);
    }
}

To use it, you'd do something like the following (the example is in an InstrumentationTestCase):

   @Override
    public void setUp() {
        // Load our JSON file.
        JSONResourceReader reader = new JSONResourceReader(getInstrumentation().getContext().getResources(), R.raw.jsonfile);
        MyJsonObject jsonObj = reader.constructUsingGson(MyJsonObject.class);
   }