Passing the Class<T> in java of a generic list?
Solution 1
You can use Bozho's solution, or avoid the creation of a temporary array list by using:
Class<List<MyClass>> clazz = (Class) List.class;
The only problem with this solution is that you have to suppress the unchecked warning with @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
.
Solution 2
You can't. You'd have to use unsafe cast:
Class<List<MyClass>> clazz =
(Class<List<MyClass>>) new ArrayList<MyClass>().getClass();
Solution 3
As a follow up to this, I found this in the Gson docs.
Type listType = new TypeToken<List<String>>() {}.getType();
Which solves the problem of getting the type safely but the TypeToken class is specific to Gson.
Solution 4
If you are using SpringFramework
you could use ParameterizedTypeReference
as follows:
restClient.getDeserializedJSON(ParameterizedTypeReference<List<MyClass>>(){},url);
Rob Stevenson-Leggett
I love to code and snowboard. Follow me on twitter: @rsleggett
Updated on July 09, 2022Comments
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Rob Stevenson-Leggett almost 2 years
I have a method for reading JSON from a service, I'm using Gson to do my serialization and have written the following method using type parameters.
public T getDeserializedJSON(Class<T> aClass,String url) { Reader r = getJSONDataAsReader(url); Gson gson = new Gson(); return gson.fromJson(r, aClass); }
I'm consuming json which returns just an array of a type e.g.
[ { "prop":"value" } { "prop":"value" } ]
I have a java class which maps to this object let's call it MyClass. However to use my method I need to do this:
RestClient<ArrayList<MyClass>> restClient = new RestClient<ArrayList<MyClass>>(); ArrayList<MyClass> results = restClient.getDeserializedJSON(ArrayList<MyClass>.class, url);
However, I can't figure out the syntax to do it. Passing just ArrayList.class doesn't work.
So is there a way I can get rid of the Class parameter or how do I get the class of the ArrayList of MyClass?
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Line over 6 years"The only problem with this solution is that you have to suppress the unchecked warning" - I'm not sure about that. You can as well have this warning, right?
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Khalid ElSayed over 6 yearsOk, but this actually didn't solve the generic problem! I look for something like
Type listType = new TypeToken<List<T>>() {}.getType();
and the generic typeT
is passed as a method paramter like you did in your question