Seamlessly Pass a JSONArray Between Activities in Android

Passing Single Values with Common Data Types in Android Using Intents is Simple, But What If You Need to Pass an Array? Here’s How You Can Easily Transfer Array Values Between Activities in Android with These Code Examples.

On Your First Activity

To pass the JSONArray from your current activity to another, you simply need to convert the JSONArray into a String representation and send it using an Intent.

// In your first Activity
Intent intent = new Intent(FirstActivity.this, SecondActivity.class);
intent.putExtra("jsonArray", mJsonArray.toString()); // Convert JSONArray to String and pass it
startActivity(intent);

Here, we are converting the JSONArray into a String using toString() to make it easy to pass via an Intent.

In the Next Activity

On the receiving end, you’ll retrieve the String extra and then convert it back into a JSONArray. Here's how you can do that:

// In the next Activity
Intent intent = getIntent();
String jsonArrayString = intent.getStringExtra("jsonArray"); // Get the passed JSON string

try {
    JSONArray array = new JSONArray(jsonArrayString);  // Convert back to JSONArray
    System.out.println(array.toString(2));  // Print or use the JSONArray as needed
} catch (JSONException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();  // Handle any JSON parsing errors
}

Summary

In just a few lines of code, you can easily pass a JSONArray between activities by converting it to a String and back. It’s a simple and effective way to share more complex data between Android activities. 🙂