I am dealing with a webservice that uses RestEasy to return a JSON object with a List element. When I try to parse the results in a JavaScript loop, everything works fine if there are two or more elements in the List. However, if there is only one element, the JavaScript loop breaks.
This issue arises because the JSON representation changes when there is only one element. For example:
{"parent":[{"a":1},{"b":2}]}
works correctly, but for some reason, the JSON looks like this for a single child:
{"parent":{"a":1}}
Notice how the array indicator [] is missing.
Is this standard JSON practice? This kind of notation requires cumbersome checks in my JavaScript code to handle cases where an array is expected but not present.
Is this a widely accepted practice? Why doesn't JSON simply return a list even if it has only one element?
{"parent":[{"a":1}]}
Could this be related to how my server-side system generates JSON and would other systems produce a different representation? I tried using dojo.forEach and encountered issues with the single-element array lacking proper list notation.