Here you get JSONObject so change this line:

JSONArray jsonArray = new JSONArray(readlocationFeed); 

with following:

JSONObject jsnobject = new JSONObject(readlocationFeed);

and after

JSONArray jsonArray = jsnobject.getJSONArray("locations");
for (int i = 0; i < jsonArray.length(); i++) {
    JSONObject explrObject = jsonArray.getJSONObject(i);
}

the way to do what I wanted was this:

JSONArray temp = jsonObject.getJSONArray("name");
int length = temp.length();
if (length > 0) {
    String [] recipients = new String [length];
    for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
        recipients[i] = temp.getString(i);
    }
}

So I ended up getting it to work with these changes! I had never worked with JSON before this project and apparently I had it written wrong for what I was trying to do.

        JSONParser jsonParser2 = new JSONParser();
        try (FileReader reader = new FileReader("Locations.json")) {
            Object obj = jsonParser2.parse(reader);

            JSONArray locationsList = (JSONArray) obj;

            //Iterate over locations array
            locationsList.forEach(emp -> parseJSONLocations((JSONObject) emp, locations, objects));

        } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
            System.out.println(e);
        } catch (IOException | ParseException e) {
            System.out.println(e);
        }

and then the method to add it all to a class was changed as such:

    private static void parseJSONLocations(JSONObject locations, Locations[] location, Objects[] object) {
        JSONObject locationObject = (JSONObject) locations.get("locations");
        String desc = (String) locationObject.get("description");
        String name = (String) locationObject.get("name");
        JSONArray objects = (JSONArray) locationObject.get("objects");

        Iterator<String> it = objects.iterator();
        List<Objects> objs = new ArrayList<>();
        while (it.hasNext()) {
            String mStr = it.next();
            for (Objects elm : object) {
                if (elm.getName().equals(mStr)) {
                    objs.add(elm);
                }
            }
        }

        JSONArray directions = (JSONArray) locationObject.get("directions");
        Map<String, String> map = new HashMap<>();
        Iterator<JSONObject> it2 = directions.iterator();
        while (it2.hasNext()) {
            JSONObject value = it2.next();
            map.put((String) value.get("direction"), (String) value.get("location"));
        }
        location[index2] = new Locations(desc, name, objs, map);
        index2++;
    }

But then I also had to change my JSON code, per jgolebiewski's suggestion:

[
    {
        "locations": {
            "description": "You look around the room and see you are in an empty room with 2 doors to the left and to the right. Knowing not how you got there, you decide to figure out how to escape and get back to your normal life.",
            "name": "start",
            "objects": [],
            "directions": [{
                    "direction": "right",
                    "location": "empty room1"
                }, {
                    "direction": "left",
                    "location": "dungeon"
                }]
        }
    },
    {
        "locations": {
            "description": "Inside this room it looks like some sort of dungeon with a cage in the middle and blood lining the wall and floor.",
            "name": "dungeon",
            "objects": ["map", "torch"],
            "directions": [{
                    "direction": "up",
                    "location": "hallway2"
                }, {
                    "direction": "down",
                    "location": "hallway1"
                }, {
                    "direction": "right",
                    "location": "start"
                }]
        }
    }
]

Thank you for this tutorial for helping as well: https://howtodoinjava.com/library/json-simple-read-write-json-examples/

use the following snippet to parse the JsonArray.

JSONArray jsonarray = new JSONArray(jsonStr);
for (int i = 0; i < jsonarray.length(); i++) {
    JSONObject jsonobject = jsonarray.getJSONObject(i);
    String name = jsonobject.getString("name");
    String url = jsonobject.getString("url");
}

You're trying to create a JSONObject based on a string that doesn't represent an object, but an array containing one object.

To get the contained object, try

JSONArray inputArray = new JSONArray(jsonString);
JSONObject jo = inputArray.getJSONObject(0);

I think some of your later work is wrong as well, but perhaps this will get you started.

for your example:

{'profiles': [{'name':'john', 'age': 44}, {'name':'Alex','age':11}]}

you will have to do something of this effect:

JSONObject myjson = new JSONObject(the_json);
JSONArray the_json_array = myjson.getJSONArray("profiles");

this returns the array object.

Then iterating will be as follows:

    int size = the_json_array.length();
    ArrayList<JSONObject> arrays = new ArrayList<JSONObject>();
    for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) {
        JSONObject another_json_object = the_json_array.getJSONObject(i);
            //Blah blah blah...
            arrays.add(another_json_object);
    }

//Finally
JSONObject[] jsons = new JSONObject[arrays.size()];
arrays.toArray(jsons);

//The end...

You will have to determine if the data is an array (simply checking that charAt(0) starts with [ character).

Hope this helps.

I finally got it:

ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
TypeFactory typeFactory = objectMapper.getTypeFactory();
List<SomeClass> someClassList = objectMapper.readValue(jsonString, typeFactory.constructCollectionType(List.class, SomeClass.class));

See my comment. You need to include the full org.json library when running as android.jar only contains stubs to compile against.

In addition, you must remove the two instances of extra } in your JSON data following longitude.

   private final static String JSON_DATA =
     "{" 
   + "  \"geodata\": [" 
   + "    {" 
   + "      \"id\": \"1\"," 
   + "      \"name\": \"Julie Sherman\","                  
   + "      \"gender\" : \"female\"," 
   + "      \"latitude\" : \"37.33774833333334\"," 
   + "      \"longitude\" : \"-121.88670166666667\""
   + "    }," 
   + "    {" 
   + "      \"id\": \"2\"," 
   + "      \"name\": \"Johnny Depp\","          
   + "      \"gender\" : \"male\"," 
   + "      \"latitude\" : \"37.336453\"," 
   + "      \"longitude\" : \"-121.884985\""
   + "    }" 
   + "  ]" 
   + "}"; 

Apart from that, geodata is in fact not a JSONObject but a JSONArray.

Here is the fully working and tested corrected code:

import org.json.JSONArray;
import org.json.JSONException;
import org.json.JSONObject;

public class ShowActivity {


  private final static String JSON_DATA =
     "{" 
   + "  \"geodata\": [" 
   + "    {" 
   + "      \"id\": \"1\"," 
   + "      \"name\": \"Julie Sherman\","                  
   + "      \"gender\" : \"female\"," 
   + "      \"latitude\" : \"37.33774833333334\"," 
   + "      \"longitude\" : \"-121.88670166666667\""
   + "    }," 
   + "    {" 
   + "      \"id\": \"2\"," 
   + "      \"name\": \"Johnny Depp\","          
   + "      \"gender\" : \"male\"," 
   + "      \"latitude\" : \"37.336453\"," 
   + "      \"longitude\" : \"-121.884985\""
   + "    }" 
   + "  ]" 
   + "}"; 

  public static void main(final String[] argv) throws JSONException {
    final JSONObject obj = new JSONObject(JSON_DATA);
    final JSONArray geodata = obj.getJSONArray("geodata");
    final int n = geodata.length();
    for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
      final JSONObject person = geodata.getJSONObject(i);
      System.out.println(person.getInt("id"));
      System.out.println(person.getString("name"));
      System.out.println(person.getString("gender"));
      System.out.println(person.getDouble("latitude"));
      System.out.println(person.getDouble("longitude"));
    }
  }
}

Here's the output:

C:\dev\scrap>java -cp json.jar;. ShowActivity
1
Julie Sherman
female
37.33774833333334
-121.88670166666667
2
Johnny Depp
male
37.336453
-121.884985

It is simple JSON object, not an array. You need to iterate through keys and print data:

    JSONObject root = new JSONObject(tokener);
    Iterator<?> keys = root.keys();

    while(keys.hasNext()){
        String key = (String)keys.next();
        System.out.println(key + "=" + root.getString(key));
    }

Please note that above solution prints keys in a random order, due to usage of HashMap internally. Please refer to this SO question describing this behavior.