StringIndexOutOfBoundsException error while parsing JSON

Question

I have been using this helper class to parse JSON data for a while now but upon doing updates the app crashes the 2nd time it is used at any point while the app is running. I can't seem to figure out why this is happening.

Update 2

The issue is with redirects and has nothing to do with cookies but I was able to fix my problem. Check my answer for solution.

Update 1

After Aaron's suggestion. I in fact don't get any JSON back after the first request. If this is an issue with a cookie why does it work the first time?

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, max-age=0, must-revalidate
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMT
Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2017 13:31:59 GMT
Location: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/I REMOVED THE KEY/gviz/tq
P3P: CP="This is not a P3P policy! See https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/151657?hl=en for more info."
P3P: CP="This is not a P3P policy! See https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/151657?hl=en for more info."

MainActivity

 new DownloadWebpageTask1(new AsyncResult1() {
                @Override
                public void onResult(JSONObject object) {

                    processJson(object);
                }
            }).execute("SOMEWEBSITE");

DownloadWebpageTask1.class

public class DownloadWebpageTask1 extends AsyncTask<String, Void, String> {
    com.test.test.AsyncResult1 callback;

    public DownloadWebpageTask1(com.test.test.AsyncResult1 callback) {
        this.callback = callback;
    }

    @Override
    protected String doInBackground(String... urls) {

        // params comes from the execute() call: params[0] is the url.
        try {
            return downloadUrl(urls[0]);
        } catch (IOException e) {
            return "Unable to download the requested page.";
        }
    }

    // onPostExecute displays the results of the AsyncTask.
    @Override
    protected void onPostExecute(String result) {
        // remove the unnecessary parts from the response and construct a JSON
        int start = result.indexOf("{", result.indexOf("{") + 1);
        int end = result.lastIndexOf("}");
        String jsonResponse = result.substring(start, end);
        Log.i("Error", jsonResponse);
        try {
            JSONObject table = new JSONObject(jsonResponse);
            callback.onResult(table);
        } catch (JSONException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    private String downloadUrl(String urlString) throws IOException {
        InputStream is = null;

        try {
            URL url = new URL(urlString);
            HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
            conn.setReadTimeout(30000 /* milliseconds */);
            conn.setConnectTimeout(30000 /* milliseconds */);
            conn.setRequestMethod("GET");
            conn.setDoInput(true);
            // Starts the query
            conn.connect();
            int responseCode = conn.getResponseCode();
            is = conn.getInputStream();

            String contentAsString = convertStreamToString(is);
            return contentAsString;
        } finally {
            if (is != null) {
                is.close();
            }
        }
    }

    private String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) {
        BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is));
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

        String line = null;
        try {
            while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
                sb.append(line + "\n");
            }
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } finally {
            try {
                is.close();
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
        return sb.toString();
    }
}

JSON

/*O_o*/
google.visualization.Query.setResponse({"version":"0.6","reqId":"0","status":"ok","sig":"806967004","table":{"cols":[{"id":"A","label":"Date","type":"date","pattern":"M/d/yyyy"},{"id":"B","label":"Name","type":"string"},{"id":"C","label":"News","type":"string"},{"id":"D","label":"url","type":"string"},{"id":"E","label":"icon","type":"string"},{"id":"F","label":"picture","type":"string"}],"rows":[{"c":[{"v":"Date(2017,0,2)","f":"1/2/2017"},{"v":"Event 1"},{"v":"This is some event data for event 1"},{"v":""},{"v":"/icon1.png"},{"v":"Test"}]},{"c":[{"v":"Date(2017,0,2)","f":"1/2/2017"},{"v":"Event 2"},{"v":"This is some event data for event 2"},{"v":"https://www.google.com/"},{"v":"/icon2.png"},{"v":"test"}]},{"c":[{"v":"Date(2016,11,30)","f":"12/30/2016"},{"v":"Event 3"},{"v":"This is some event data for event 3"},{"v":""},{"v":"/icon3.png"},{"v":"test"}]},{"c":[{"v":"Date(2016,11,30)","f":"12/30/2016"},{"v":"Event 4"},{"v":"This is some event data for event 4"},{"v":""},{"v":"/icon4.png"},{"v":"test"}]},{"c":[{"v":"Date(2016,11,30)","f":"12/30/2016"},{"v":"Event 5"},{"v":"This is some event data for event 5"},{"v":"https://www.google.com/"},{"v":"/icon5.png"},{"v":"test"}]}]}});

Error

W/System.err: java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Read timed out
  W/System.err:     at org.apache.harmony.xnet.provider.jsse.NativeCrypto.SSL_read(Native Method)
  W/System.err:     at org.apache.harmony.xnet.provider.jsse.OpenSSLSocketImpl$SSLInputStream.read(OpenSSLSocketImpl.java:664)
  W/System.err:     at libcore.net.http.UnknownLengthHttpInputStream.read(UnknownLengthHttpInputStream.java:41)
  W/System.err:     at java.io.InputStreamReader.read(InputStreamReader.java:244)
  W/System.err:     at java.io.BufferedReader.fillBuf(BufferedReader.java:130)
  W/System.err:     at java.io.BufferedReader.readLine(BufferedReader.java:354)
  W/System.err:     at com.test.test.DownloadWebpageTask1.convertStreamToString(DownloadWebpageTask1.java:84)
  W/System.err:     at com.test.test.DownloadWebpageTask1.downloadUrl(DownloadWebpageTask1.java:69)
  W/System.err:     at com.test.test.DownloadWebpageTask1.doInBackground(DownloadWebpageTask1.java:32)
  W/System.err:     at com.test.test.DownloadWebpageTask1.doInBackground(DownloadWebpageTask1.java:20)
  W/System.err:     at android.os.AsyncTask$2.call(AsyncTask.java:287)
  W/System.err:     at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:234)
  W/System.err:     at android.os.AsyncTask$SerialExecutor$1.run(AsyncTask.java:230)
  W/System.err:     at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1080)
  W/System.err:     at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:573)
  W/System.err:     at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:856)
  W/dalvikvm: threadid=1: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0xa6165908)
  E/AndroidRuntime: FATAL EXCEPTION: main
                         java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: length=1566; regionStart=-1; regionLength=0
                             at java.lang.String.startEndAndLength(String.java:583)
                             at java.lang.String.substring(String.java:1464)
                             at com.test.test.DownloadWebpageTask1.onPostExecute(DownloadWebpageTask1.java:44)
                             at com.test.test.DownloadWebpageTask1.onPostExecute(DownloadWebpageTask1.java:20)
                             at android.os.AsyncTask.finish(AsyncTask.java:631)
                             at android.os.AsyncTask.access$600(AsyncTask.java:177)
                             at android.os.AsyncTask$InternalHandler.handleMessage(AsyncTask.java:644)
                             at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
                             at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:137)
                             at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5041)
                             at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
                             at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:511)
                             at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:793)
                             at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:560)
                             at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)

Answer 1

This is an issue having to do with redirects. Google changed the URL where JSON data is pulled from.

In your URL request change

https://spreadsheets.google.com/tq?key=YOUR_KEY_HERE

To

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/YOUR_KEY_HERE/gviz/tq

And some slightly modified code from https://stackoverflow.com/a/40105282/6147989 and everything will be up and running.

  private String downloadUrl(String urlString) throws IOException {
            String temp = "";
            try {
                URL obj = new URL(urlString);
                HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) obj.openConnection();
                conn.setReadTimeout(5000);
                conn.addRequestProperty("Accept-Language", "en-US,en;q=0.8");
                conn.addRequestProperty("User-Agent", "Mozilla");
                conn.addRequestProperty("Referer", "google.com");

                System.out.println("Request URL ... " + urlString);

                boolean redirect = false;

                // normally, 3xx is redirect
                int status = conn.getResponseCode();
                if (status != HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK) {
                    if (status == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_MOVED_TEMP
                            || status == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_MOVED_PERM
                            || status == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_SEE_OTHER)
                        redirect = true;
                }

                System.out.println("Response Code ... " + status);

                if (redirect) {
                    // get redirect url from "location" header field
                    String newUrl = conn.getHeaderField("Location");

                    // get the cookie if need, for login
                    String cookies = conn.getHeaderField("Set-Cookie");

                    // open the new connnection again
                    conn = (HttpURLConnection) new URL(newUrl).openConnection();
                    conn.setRequestProperty("Cookie", cookies);
                    conn.addRequestProperty("Accept-Language", "en-US,en;q=0.8");
                    conn.addRequestProperty("User-Agent", "Mozilla");
                    conn.addRequestProperty("Referer", "google.com");

                    System.out.println("Redirect to URL : " + newUrl);
                }

                BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
                        new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream()));
                String inputLine;
                StringBuffer html = new StringBuffer();

                while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) {
                    html.append(inputLine);
                }
                in.close();

                System.out.println("URL Content... \n" + html.toString());
                System.out.println("Done");

                temp = html.toString();

            } catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
            return temp;
        }

Answer 2

I think that the problem is related to the json string (result variable). I expect that it doesn't contain '{' character therefore this part of code

int start = result.indexOf("{", result.indexOf("{") + 1);
int end = result.lastIndexOf("}");
String jsonResponse = result.substring(start, end);

throws the exception