JsonSyntaxException: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Expected BEGIN_OBJECT but was STRING

At first glance you would expect an error like this:


JsonSyntaxException: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Expected BEGIN_OBJECT but was STRING


quite simple: the JSON is incorrect.

But what if JSONLint even validates this as correct?


In this example, the code was produced by an Android App consuming a JSON interfaces produced by PHP.


And guess what?!


It was an UTF-8 encoding issue within the JSON content - a special character from a town name needed UTF-8 encoding.


This solves the issue and saved my Friday!