This is a duplicate question because the following questions are either messy or they are not answered at all:
deserializing-a-generic-type-with-jackson
jackson-deserialize-into-runtime-specified-class
jackson-deserialize-using-generic-class
jackson-deserialize-generic-class-variable
I hope that this question will finally find an answer that makes this clear for good.
Having a model :
public class AgentResponse<T> {
private T result;
public AgentResponse(T result) {
this.result = result;
}
public T getResult() {
return result;
}
}
JSON input:
{"result":{"first-client-id":3,"test-mail-module":3,"third-client-id":3,"second-client-id":3}}
and two recommended ways of deserializing generic types :
mapper.readValue(out, new TypeReference<AgentResponse<Map<String, Integer>>>() {});
or
JavaType javaType = mapper.getTypeFactory().constructParametricType(AgentResponse.class, Map.class);
mapper.readValue(out, javaType);
Jackson is never able to deal with the generic type T, it figures it's a Map from JavaType, but it finds Object type constructor argument because of type erasure and throws an error. So is this a Jackson bug, or am I doing something wrong? What else is explicit specification of TypeReference or JavaType for?
com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonMappingException: No suitable constructor found for type [simple type, class com.fg.mail.smtp.AgentResponse<java.util.Map<java.lang.String,java.lang.Integer>>]: can not instantiate from JSON object (need to add/enable type information?)
at [Source: java.io.InputStreamReader@4f2d26d; line: 1, column: 2]
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonMappingException.from(JsonMappingException.java:164)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.BeanDeserializerBase.deserializeFromObjectUsingNonDefault(BeanDeserializerBase.java:984)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.BeanDeserializer.deserializeFromObject(BeanDeserializer.java:276)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.BeanDeserializer.deserialize(BeanDeserializer.java:121)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper._readMapAndClose(ObjectMapper.java:2888)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper.readValue(ObjectMapper.java:2064)
You need to add some annotations on the constructor to tell Jackson how to build the object. The following worked for me:
public class AgentResponse<T> {
private T result;
@JsonCreator
public AgentResponse(@JsonProperty("result") T result) {
this.result = result;
}
public T getResult() {
return result;
}
}
Without the @JsonCreator
annotation, Jackson cannot know to call this constructor. And without the @JsonProperty
annotation, Jackson does not know that the first argument of the constructor maps to the result
property.
I tried using the same approach but I haven't annotated my model class. It worked fine for me.
This is my model class
public class BasicMessage<T extends Serializable> implements Message<T> {
private MessageHeader messageHeader = new MessageHeader();
private T payload;
public MessageHeader getHeaders() {
return messageHeader;
}
public Object getHeader(String key) {
return messageHeader.get(key);
}
public Object addHeader(String key, Object header) {
return messageHeader.put(key, header);
}
public T getPayload() {
return payload;
}
public void setPayload(T messageBody) {
this.payload = messageBody;
}
}
And I used the following method for deserializing the payload
public static <T extends Serializable> BasicMessage<T> getConcreteMessageType(String jsonString, Class<T> classType) {
try {
ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
JavaType javaType = mapper.getTypeFactory().constructParametricType(BasicMessage.class, classType);
return mapper.readValue(jsonString, javaType);
} catch (IOException e) {
}
}
where jsonString contains the BasicMessageObject in a string.
JSON string that needs to be deserialized will have to contain the type information about parameter T
.
You will have to put Jackson annotations on every class that can be passed as parameter T
to class AgentResponse
so that the type information about parameter type T
can be read from / written to JSON string by Jackson.
Let us assume that T
can be any class that extends abstract class Result
.
public class AgentResponse<T extends Result> {
public Hits<T> hits;
}
@JsonTypeInfo(use = JsonTypeInfo.Id.NAME, include = JsonTypeInfo.As.WRAPPER_OBJECT)
@JsonSubTypes({
@JsonSubTypes.Type(value = ImageResult.class, name = "ImageResult"),
@JsonSubTypes.Type(value = NewsResult.class, name = "NewsResult")})
public abstract class Result {
}
public class ImageResult extends Result {
}
public class NewsResult extends Result {
}
Once each of the class (or their common supertype) that can be passed as parameter T
is annotated, Jackson will include information about parameter T
in the JSON. Such JSON can then be deserialized without knowing the parameter T
at compile time.
This Jackson documentation link talks about Polymorphic Deserialization but is useful to refer to for this question as well.
public class AgentResponse<T> {
private T result;
public AgentResponse(T result) {
this.result = result;
}
public T getResult() {
return result;
}
}
So for the above class structure and T can be of Type T1,T2 class
So to deserialize for AgentResponse, use the following code
JavaType javaType = objectMapper.getTypeFactory.constructParametricType(AgentResponse.class,T1.class)
AgentResponse<T1> agentResponseT1 = objectMapper.readValue(inputJson,javaType);