Parsing String Array into Arraylist in Java

Question

I'm calling a RESTful Api from my Java application which provides me result in following format:

["Item1", "Item2" , "Item3"]

How do I parse it into ArrayList object?

Code:

    private String getResponseString(URI URL) {

    HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpContext context = new BasicHttpContext();
    HttpGet get = new HttpGet();
    get.setURI(URL);

    try {
        HttpResponse response = client.execute(get, context);
        return getASCIIContentFromEntity(response.getEntity());

    } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
        Log.e(Static.DebugTag, e.getMessage());
        return null;
    } catch (IOException e) {
        Log.e(Static.DebugTag, e.getMessage());
        return null;
    }

}

private String getASCIIContentFromEntity(HttpEntity entity)
        throws IllegalStateException, IOException {
    InputStream in = entity.getContent();
    StringBuffer out = new StringBuffer();
    int n = 1;
    while (n > 0) {
        byte[] b = new byte[4096];
        n = in.read(b);
        if (n > 0)
            out.append(new String(b, 0, n));
    }
    return out.toString();
}

Now I want to make another function that takes the String returning form getASCIIContentFromEntity() as param and return an Arraylist.

P.S. I have response in a string object.

P.P.S. Title may be misleading as in I don't have idea what to call it.

Thanking in anticipation.

Answer 1

Since the string appears to contain valid JSON, you could use a JSON parser, such as Gson, to parse the string. See Arrays Examples and Collections Examples in the manual.

Answer 2

Take a loot at java.util.Arrays.

List<String> list = Arrays.asList(["Item1", "Item2", "Item3"]);