Handle the single and multiple JSON record with one wrapper class

Question

When i am getting multiple data in mindTouchPage then my code is working. But when i am receiving a single record as response then it throwing the exception

System.JSONException: Expected List but found { at [line:1, column:53]

My Wrapper Class

public class MindTouchSearchWrapper {
        public Integer count { get; set; }
        //public Integer querycount { get; set; }
        //public Integer ranking { get; set; }
       // public MindTouchPage mindTouchPage{get;set;}
        public List<MindTouchPage> mindTouchPage { get; set; }


  class MindTouchPage
    {
        public string id { get; set; }
        public string guid { get; set; }
        public string draftstate { get; set; }
        public string href { get; set; }
        public string deleted { get; set; }
    //  public string unpublish { get; set; }
        public string revision { get; set; }
        public string score { get; set; }
        public string article { get; set; }
        public string datecreated { get; set; }
        public string dateedited { get; set; }
        public string datemodified { get; set; }
        public string description { get; set; }
        public string language { get; set; }
        public string languageeffective { get; set; }
        public string namespace { get; set; }
        public string summary { get; set; }
        public string timeuuid { get; set; }
        public string title { get; set; }
        public string uriui { get; set; }
    }

public static MindTouchSearchWrapper parse(String responseData){
            System.debug('Data Befor deserialization and after processing is ' +responseData);
            System.debug('Deserialized Data is ' +(MindTouchSearchWrapper) System.JSON.deserialize(responseData, MindTouchSearchWrapper.class) );
            return (MindTouchSearchWrapper) System.JSON.deserialize(responseData, MindTouchSearchWrapper.class);
}

}

JSON Response for Multiple Data

 {  
       "count":"30",
       "querycount":"30",
       "ranking":"adaptive",
       "mindTouchPage":[  
          {  
             "id":"294",
             "guid":"b8ec34b2ec734aa4814df5b1e8dd2adf",
             "draftstate":"inactive",
             "deleted":"false",
             "unpublish":"true",
             "revision":"2",
             "score":"1",
             "timeuuid":"01c72c00-2f53-11e6-806c-a7241b5c7980",
             "title":"Structure your site for product versioning",
             "uriui":"https://viptela-prod.mindtouch.us/The_MindTouch_Workbook_-_Demo_Change/Chapter_II_-_How_do_I_create_stuff%3F/010_Create_new_content/012_Handling_product_versioning_in_your_structure",

          },
             "id":"333",
             "guid":"01955249d38a4c8681940f8e84b55b90",
             "draftstate":"inactive",
              "deleted":"false",
             "unpublish":"true",
             "revision":"2",
             "score":"0.9655172",
             "datecreated":"Mon, 20 Jun 2016 06:59:54 GMT",
             "dateedited":"Mon, 20 Jun 2016 07:00:25 GMT",
             "datemodified":"Mon, 20 Jun 2016 12:36:27 GMT",
             "description":"17 words added",
             "timeuuid":"9b28d780-36e3-11e6-8017-3ce2f83fe0c8",
             "title":"Product2",
             "uriui":"https://viptela-prod.mindtouch.us/Advisory1/First_Topic/Product1/Product2",

          },

        ]
    }

JSON Response For Single Data

{  
   "count":"1",
   "@querycount":"1",
   "@ranking":"adaptive",

   "mindTouchPage":{  
      "id":"333",
      "guid":"01955249d38a4c8681940f8e84b55b90",
      "draftstate":"inactive",
      "deleted":"false",
      "unpublish":"true",
      "revision":"2",
      "score":"1",
      "aliases":{  },
      "comments":{  },
      "contents":{  },
      "contentsalt":{  },
      "namespace":"main",
      "timeuuid":"9b28d780-36e3-11e6-8017-b0ae3a3ebec9",
      "title":"Product2",
      "uriui":""

   }
}

How to write the wrapper class which can handle both single and multiple data

Answer 1

The problem here is the API. It's returning inconsistent schema. I would strongly suggest to update the API to always return array of records.

If that's not an option, for some reason, the approach I would suggest having separate class Result, with common schema and parse Json based on that class first. After that, depending on count field, parse either list or singe record.