android - Weird SOAP response, is it JSON? How to parse it?

Question

I am using ksoap2 to consume a SOAP based web-service, and the format of the response I am getting is something like:

anyType{
    key1=value1;
    key2=value2;

    key3=anyType{

        key4=value4;
        key5=value5;
        key6= anyType{
                key7= anyType{
                    key8= value8;
                };
            };

    };

    key9=value9;
}

That is the JSON objects (if we assume that this is JSON) begin with anyType{ and end with }, keys and values are separated by =, and ; are field separators/statement terminators/whatever.

I tried to validate the response string using online validators but it failed. This points out that this is not a valid JSON object.

A similar example can be found in this question. But the accepted answer did not work for me because, well first the response string does not begin with { but with anyType{, and if I put anyType{ in the if condition, it still raises an exception next time when it encounters an anyType{ (a nested JSON object)

The second answer seems to work to some extent, but the problem is that my entire response string appears to come as a single property (since the propertyCount is 1), so when I print out the name or value of the property, the entire response string is printed.

I have googled it a lot and tried everything I could find. So I suppose I'll have to parse it myself.

My question is what is the best way to parse this kind of response.

Should I try to parse it using regex or should I convert the response string to a JSON format by replacing all occurances of anyType{ by {, = by :, ; by , etc. etc. , and then converting this string to a JSONObject by something like:

jsonObject= new JSONObject(responseString);

and then extract keys and values by something like:

Iterator itr= jsonObject.keys();

        while(itr.hasNext()) {
            String value = null; 

            String key= (String) itr.next();
            try {
                value= jsonObject.getString(key);
            } catch (JSONException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }

            Log.i(TAG, key + " : " + value); 

            // ......
        }

---

   import java.util.Iterator;

import org.json.JSONException;
import org.json.JSONObject;

public class JSONPracticeOne {

    private static JSONObject jsonObject;

    private static String key;
    private static String value;

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        String responseString= " anyType{key1=value1;key2=value2;key3=anyType{key4=value4;key5=value5;key6=anyType{key7=anyType{key8=value8};};};key9=value9;}";

        responseString = responseString.replaceAll("anyType\Q{\E", "{");

        responseString = responseString.replaceAll("\Q=\E", ":");

        responseString = responseString.replaceAll(";", ",");

        responseString = responseString.replaceAll(",\Q}\E","}");

        //System.out.println(responseString); 

        //System.out.println();

        responseString= responseString.replaceAll("(:\{)", "-"); //Replace :{ by -
        responseString= responseString.replaceAll("[:]", "":""); //Replace : by ":"
        responseString= responseString.replaceAll("-", "":{""); //Replace - back to :{

        //System.out.println(responseString);

        //System.out.println();

        responseString = responseString.replaceAll("[,]",","");

        //System.out.println(responseString); 

        //System.out.println();

        //String string= responseString.charAt(1) + "";  System.out.println("CHECHE " + string); 

        responseString = responseString.replaceFirst("[\{]","{"");

        //System.out.println(responseString);

        //System.out.println(); 

        //responseString= responseString.replaceAll("([^\}],)","","); // truncation

        responseString= responseString.replaceAll("(\},)", "-"); // replace }, by -

        responseString= responseString.replaceAll(",","","); //replace , by ",

        responseString = responseString.replaceAll("-","},"); // replace - back to },

        //System.out.println(responseString);

        //System.out.println();

        responseString = responseString.replaceAll("(?<![\}])\}",""}");

        System.out.println(responseString);

        System.out.println("**********************************************************************************************

");}}

OUTPUT:-

{
    "key1":"value1",
    "key2":"value2",
    "key3":{
        "key5":"value5",
        "key6":{
            "key7":{
                "key8":"value8"
            }
        },
        "key4":"value4"
    },
    "key9":"value9"
}

Answer 1

Response is not JSON, it is JSON-like object and you can parse it using ksoap2's abilities.

In SoapObject.java, there are some methods like as follow:

 public Object getProperty(int index) {
        Object prop = properties.elementAt(index);
        if(prop instanceof PropertyInfo) {
            return ((PropertyInfo)prop).getValue();
        } else {
            return ((SoapObject)prop);
        }
    }

and

 /**
* Get the toString value of the property.
*
* @param index
* @return
*/
    public String getPropertyAsString(int index) {
        PropertyInfo propertyInfo = (PropertyInfo) properties.elementAt(index);
        return propertyInfo.getValue().toString();
    }

and

/**
* Get the property with the given name
*
* @throws java.lang.RuntimeException
* if the property does not exist
*/
    public Object getProperty(String name) {
        Integer index = propertyIndex(name);
        if (index != null) {
            return getProperty(index.intValue());
        } else {
            throw new RuntimeException("illegal property: " + name);
        }
    }

and

/**
* Get the toString value of the property.
*
* @param name
* @return
*/

    public String getPropertyAsString(String name) {
        Integer index = propertyIndex(name);
        if (index != null) {
            return getProperty(index.intValue()).toString();
        } else {
            throw new RuntimeException("illegal property: " + name);
        }
    }

etc..

And you can try parse your object like this:

try {
            androidHttpTransport.call(SOAP_ACTION, envelope);
            SoapObject response = (SoapObject) envelope.getResponse();

            if (response.toString().equals("anyType{}") || response == null) {
                return;
            } else {
                String value1 = response.getPropertyAsString("key1");
                String value2 = response.getPropertyAsString("key2");

                SoapObject soapKey3 = (SoapObject) response.getProperty("key3");
                String value4 = soapKey3.getPropertyAsString("key4");
                String value5 = soapKey3.getPropertyAsString("key5");

                SoapObject soapKey6 = (SoapObject) soapKey3.getProperty("key6");
                SoapObject soapKey7 = (SoapObject) soapKey6.getProperty("key7");

                String value8 = soapKey7.getPropertyAsString("key8");

                String value9 = response.getPropertyAsString("key9");

                System.out.println(value1 + ", " + value2 + ", " + value4 + ", " + value5 + ", " + value8 + ", " + value9);
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }