I want to return the string form of the Json response. The error I get is "Expected a string but was BEGIN_OBJECT at path$"

private const val BASE_URL = "<https://newsapi.org/v2/>"
private const val API_KEY = "1234"

private val moshi = Moshi.Builder()
    .add(KotlinJsonAdapterFactory())
    .build()

private val retrofit = Retrofit.Builder()
    .addConverterFactory(MoshiConverterFactory.create())
    .baseUrl(BASE_URL)
    .build()

interface NewsApiService {
    @GET("top-headlines?country=us&apiKey=${API_KEY}")
    fun getProperties():
            Call<String>
}

object NewsApi {
    val retrofitService : NewsApiService by lazy {
        retrofit.create(NewsApiService::class.java) }
}

class NewsViewModel : ViewModel() {

    // The internal MutableLiveData String that stores the most recent response
    private val _response = MutableLiveData<String>()

    // The external immutable LiveData for the response String
    val response: LiveData<String>
        get() = _response

    /**
     * Call getNewsData() on init so we can display status immediately.
     */
    init {
        getNewsData()
    }

    /**
     * Sets the value of the status LiveData to the News API status.
     */
    private fun getNewsData() {

        _response.value = NewsApi.retrofitService.getProperties().enqueue(
            object: Callback<String> {
                override fun onFailure(call: Call<String>, t: Throwable){
                    _response.value = "Failure: " + t.message
                }

                override fun onResponse(call: Call<String>, response: Response<String>) {
                   _response.value = response.body()
                }
            }).toString()
    }
}

you have to write your own converter I think

yep. make an annotation

@Json

, annotate the endpoint with

@Json

and have its body type as

String

, in a custom converter match on both the

type == String::class.java

and the annotations array contains an instance of

Json::class.java

and then just call

ResponseBody.string()

and return it.

Thanks @jw I actually added scalar converter to my gradle build and the magic happened.