Flutter FormatException: Unexpected character (at character 1)

Updated: February 13, 2023 By: Guest Contributor One comment
Table Of Contents

Problem

When sending an HTTP request in Flutter, you may want to decode the JSON response. When doing so, you may encounter the following error:

Flutter FormatException: Unexpected character (at character 1)

This error is caused by the wrong JSON format you get from the response body (e.g. it doesn’t start with an open curly bracket “{“).

Solutions

Printing out the response.body, see the output, and try one of the following solutions:

1. Correct the API endpoint if there is something wrong with it.

2. Provide header information when sending a request:

{
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    'Charset': 'utf-8'
}

3. The API may need some auth credentials like username, password, token… Provide them if needed.

4. Maybe the bug isn’t in your Flutter code but on the server side. Review it or communicate with the backend developers in your team.

Hope you’ll get through the annoying problem soon. Further reading:

You can also check out our Flutter category page or Dart category page for the latest tutorials and examples.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
1 Comment
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Hyefur
Hyefur
2 years ago

Please elaborate more on how to solve this

Related Articles