Determine whether JSON is a JSONObject or JSONArray

I found better way to determine:

String data = "{ ... }";
Object json = new JSONTokener(data).nextValue();
if (json instanceof JSONObject)
  //you have an object
else if (json instanceof JSONArray)
  //you have an array

tokenizer is able to return more types: http://developer.android.com/reference/org/json/JSONTokener.html#nextValue()


There are a couple ways you can do this:

  1. You can check the character at the first position of the String (after trimming away whitespace, as it is allowed in valid JSON). If it is a {, you are dealing with a JSONObject, if it is a [, you are dealing with a JSONArray.
  2. If you are dealing with JSON (an Object), then you can do an instanceof check. yourObject instanceof JSONObject. This will return true if yourObject is a JSONObject. The same applies to JSONArray.