I’ve been working on a java Spring project after a year of building in python. Recently I needed a single string (NPI Number) from the US Health and Human Services api. It's a simple api with no auth.

In python it's easy:

    request_url = f”https://npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov/api/?version=2.1&first_name={name_parts[0]}&middle_name={name_parts[1]}&last_name={name_parts[2]}&state=nj”

    npi_resp = requests.get(request_url) json = npi_resp.json() npi = json[“results”][0][“number”]
                    

However in java spring it was anything but simple. The Spring Documentation does not show how to “grab one string” and parse it easily. I guess they consider it bad manners in their relentless pursuit of design perfection. They only how to use the built-in Jackson library to serialize GET results into POJO (Plain Old Java objects).

That solution is often overkill. Sometimes you just want a String. To accomplish this I had to dig around quite a bit through old Stackoverflow articles (proving stackoverflow is still very useful as an archive of human-tested tips).

Here it is.

                    
    //In pom.xml, include the json dependency at https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.json/json
    //put together a url as in the python example above. I'm not your mom.
    String result = restClient.get()
            .uri(sb.toString())
            .header("Content-Type", "application/json")
            .retrieve()
            .body(String.class);
    JSONObject json = new JSONObject(result);
    JSONArray jsonArray = json.getJSONArray("results");
    
    for (int i = 0; i < jsonArray.length(); i++) {
        JSONObject jsonElem = jsonArray.getJSONObject(i);
        log.info("npi json obj: {}", jsonElem);
        String npi = jsonElem.getString("number");
        npis.add(npi);
        log.info("npi number: {} for: {}", npi, fullName);
    }

                    
                    

I hope this helps someone.