HTTP POST request end with bad request and JSON parse error

Question

Ok I really find it very strange , I will paste code if someone can help me. To make it clear I do a POST request in Android and back-end server is in node.js.In node.js I get the following exception SyntaxError: Unexpected token in JSON at position 144 and in Android 400 bad request(URL is good). I send JSON data to the server, the problem is that node can't parse the JSON I send to it.

protected JSONObject doInBackground(String... params) {
        JSONObject postData = new JSONObject();
        UserData user = UserData.loadData(CheckOut.this);
        SaveComand sc = SaveComand.loadData();
        double pretTotal = 0;
        String food ="";
        for(Product  pr : sc.products){
            pretTotal += pr.getPret();
            food += pr.getNume()+",";
        }
        food = new String(food.substring(0,food.length()-1));
        HttpURLConnection conn = null;
        try {
            URL url = new URL(params[0]);
            conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
            conn.setRequestMethod("POST");
            conn.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=utf-8");
            conn.setDoInput(true);
            conn.setDoOutput(true);
            conn.connect();
            DataOutputStream wr = new DataOutputStream(conn.getOutputStream());
            postData.put("username", user.user.getNume());
            postData.put("nume", nume.getText().toString());
            postData.put("idRest", sc.products.get(0).getRestId());
            postData.put("adresa", adresa.getText().toString());
            postData.put("phone", phone.getText().toString());
          //postData.put("food", food);
            postData.put("pretTotal", pretTotal);
            Log.d("STATE", postData.toString());
            wr.writeBytes(postData.toString());
            wr.flush();
            wr.close();
            StringBuilder response = new StringBuilder();
            int status = conn.getResponseCode();
            Log.d("STATE",conn.getResponseMessage());
            if (status != 200) {
                throw new IOException("POST failed with error code " + status);
            } else {
                BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream()));
                String inputLine;
                while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) {
                    response.append(inputLine);
                }
                in.close();
            }

            return new JSONObject(new String(response));

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } finally {
            if (conn != null) {
                conn.disconnect();
            }
        }

        return null;

    }

Food string is equal to strings from an object stored in external storage of device. So postData is my JSON object I send to server. If I comment the following line postData.put("food",food); everything works fine. If I not comment that line I have the above error. Here is how JSONObject look like: {"username":"gabrill","nume":"asdass","idRest":1,"adresa":"Strada Câmpului 10, Ulmeni 437355, Romania","phone":"0749162780","food":"Mic Dejun Meșteșugar","pretTotal":16.2} this is the string I pass to server to trigger the error . I really see nothing wrong with food string.

EDIT Seems like it doesn't like specific special characters
It has nothing to ă but it doesn't like ș. What should I do? Replace all special ș chars in database with s?

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 12 '19 at 08:51

You can make use of the Normalizer class starting with API level 9+.

You can find here and here simple ways to do it.

After your edit: Yes, you should make sure the data sent can be read. This can also be achieved server-side by normalizing/sanitizing the string when the request is received.

HTTP POST request end with bad request and JSON parse error

1 Answers1