Passing JSONObject into another activity

I'm hitting an external API that's returning JSON data (new dvd titles). I'm able to parse out the JSON and list each dvd title and other dvd information into a ListView just fine. I was also able to setup an onListItemClick method just fine for primitive data (title string). I ended up writing something like so for the onListItemClick method:

Just to note, the productArray is a class var that's being set by another method that holds an array of JSONObjects.

protected void onListItemClick(ListView l, View v, int position, long id) {
    super.onListItemClick(l, v, position, id);

    Intent i = new Intent(DvdListingActivity.this, MovieProductActivity.class);
    try {
        JSONObject jsonObj = productArray.getJSONObject(position);
        i.putExtra("mTitle", jsonObj.getJSONObject("Title").opt("val").toString());
        i.putExtra("mRelDate", jsonObj.getJSONObject("RelDate").opt("val").toString());
        i.putExtra("mDesc", jsonObj.getJSONObject("Desc").opt("val").toString());
        i.putExtra("mRating", jsonObj.getJSONObject("MPAA").getJSONObject("Rating").opt("val").toString());
        i.putExtra("mActors", jsonObj.getJSONObject("Actors").opt("val").toString());
        i.putExtra("mImage", jsonObj.getJSONObject("Image").opt("val").toString());
        startActivity(i);

    } catch (JSONException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    }       

}

The above code all works, but I'm thinking there's GOTTA be a better way for me to pass in data to another Activity. I was thinking that I would be able to pass a JSONObject that contains all the data for a dvd movie instead of setting each data point individually.

I tried for a week and a half to figure out how to use Parcelable. I tried instantiating a new JSONObject jsonObj that implements Parcelable with no luck. I kept getting an error in my LogCat that said that the object was un-parcelable.

I've tried reading the Android developer site and other blogs, but I couldn't apply their examples to what I needed to do.

Any help would be much appreciated


Solution 1:

You can simply put an entire JSONObject as a string. Something like this:

i.putString("product", jsonObj.toString);

And then in the MovieProductActivity you could

JSONObject jsonObj = new JSONObject(getIntent().getStringExtra("product"));

Solution 2:

From Current Activity

Intent mIntent = new Intent(CurrentActivity.this, TargetActivity.class);
mIntent.putExtra("ITEM_EXTRA", json_object.toString());
startActivity(mIntent);

From Target Activity's onCreate

try {
   json_object = new JSONObject(getIntent().getStringExtra("ITEM_EXTRA"));

   Log.e(TAG, "Example Item: " + json_object.getString("KEY"));

} catch (JSONException e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
}

Solution 3:

You can just encapsulate all of the information about a movie into a Movie object, which implements Parcelable.

The code will look similar to above, but instead of passing 6 different extras you can just pass one extra that is the movie.

Movie movie = new Movie();
movie.setTitle(jsonObj.getJSONObject("Title").opt("val").toString());
movie.setRelDat(jsonObj.getJSONObject("RelDate").opt("val").toString());
.
.
.
i.putExtra("movie", movie);

For information on implementing a Parcelable object, see Parcelable docs. You basically just write out each string in 'writeToParcel', and read in each string in 'readFromParcel' in the correct order.