Handling Malformed JSON Response from REST API in Java - Deserialization Issues
I'm trying to implement I'm upgrading from an older version and I'm working on a Java application that consumes a REST API returning JSON data..... Recently, I've encountered a situation where the API sometimes returns malformed JSON, resulting in deserialization failures when using the Jackson library. For instance, the API occasionally omits quotes around string values, which leads to the following behavior: ``` com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParseException: Unrecognized token 'someValue': was expecting ('true', 'false' or 'null' ...) ``` I've attempted to handle this by implementing a custom deserializer, but I still face scenarios when the structure of the JSON is inconsistent. For example, the response might look like this: ```json { "id": 123, "name": someValue, "details": { "age": 30, "city": "New York" } } ``` As you can see, `someValue` is missing quotes. I tried using a `JsonNode` to read the response as a tree and then reconstruct the JSON manually, but this approach is cumbersome and leads to additional complexity in my code. Here's a snippet of what I've attempted: ```java ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper(); JsonNode jsonNode = mapper.readTree(response); if (jsonNode.hasNonNull("name")) { String name = jsonNode.get("name").asText(); } else { // handle missing or malformed value } ``` This doesn't seem to be a robust solution since it doesn't address the potential for other malformed values or structures. I would appreciate advice on best practices for handling such inconsistent JSON data in Java, especially using Jackson. Is there a more elegant way to sanitize or preprocess the JSON before deserialization? Any help or examples would be greatly appreciated! The stack includes Java and several other technologies. Any ideas how to fix this? I'm working on a desktop app that needs to handle this. I'm open to any suggestions. This is part of a larger CLI tool I'm building.