Gson: How do I deserialize an inner JSON object to a map if the property name is not fixed? - gson

Question

My client retrieves JSON content as below:
{
"table": "tablename",
"update": 1495104575669,
"rows": [
{"column5": 11, "column6": "yyy"},
{"column3": 22, "column4": "zzz"}
]
}
In rows array content, the key is not fixed. I want to retrieve the key and value and save into a Map using Gson 2.8.x.
How can I configure Gson to simply use to deserialize?
Here is my idea:
public class Dataset {
private String table;
private long update;
private List<Rows>> lists; <-- little confused here.
or private List<HashMap<String,Object> lists
Setter/Getter
}
public class Rows {
private HashMap<String, Object> map;
....
}
Dataset k = gson.fromJson(jsonStr, Dataset.class);
log.info(k.getRows().size()); <-- I got two null object
Thanks.

Answer 1

Gson does not support such a thing out of box. It would be nice, if you can make the property name fixed. If not, then you can have a few options that probably would help you.
Just rename the Dataset.lists field to Dataset.rows, if the property name is fixed, rows.
If the possible name set is known in advance, suggest Gson to pick alternative names using the #SerializedName.
If the possible name set is really unknown and may change in the future, you might want to try to make it fully dynamic using a custom TypeAdapter (streaming mode; requires less memory, but harder to use) or a custom JsonDeserializer (object mode; requires more memory to store intermediate tree views, but it's easy to use) registered with GsonBuilder.
For option #2, you can simply add the names of name alternatives:
#SerializedName(value = "lists", alternate = "rows")
final List<Map<String, Object>> lists;
For option #3, bind a downstream List<Map<String, Object>> type adapter trying to detect the name dynamically. Note that I omit the Rows class deserialization strategy for simplicity (and I believe you might want to remove the Rows class in favor of simple Map<String, Object> (another note: use Map, try not to specify collection implementations -- hash maps are unordered, but telling Gson you're going to deal with Map would let it to pick an ordered map like LinkedTreeMap (Gson internals) or LinkedHashMap that might be important for datasets)).
// Type tokens are immutable and can be declared constants
private static final TypeToken<String> stringTypeToken = new TypeToken<String>() {
};
private static final TypeToken<Long> longTypeToken = new TypeToken<Long>() {
};
private static final TypeToken<List<Map<String, Object>>> stringToObjectMapListTypeToken = new TypeToken<List<Map<String, Object>>>() {
};
private static final Gson gson = new GsonBuilder()
.registerTypeAdapterFactory(new TypeAdapterFactory() {
#Override
public <T> TypeAdapter<T> create(final Gson gson, final TypeToken<T> typeToken) {
if ( typeToken.getRawType() != Dataset.class ) {
return null;
}
// If the actual type token represents the Dataset class, then pick the bunch of downstream type adapters
final TypeAdapter<String> stringTypeAdapter = gson.getDelegateAdapter(this, stringTypeToken);
final TypeAdapter<Long> primitiveLongTypeAdapter = gson.getDelegateAdapter(this, longTypeToken);
final TypeAdapter<List<Map<String, Object>>> stringToObjectMapListTypeAdapter = stringToObjectMapListTypeToken);
// And compose the bunch into a single dataset type adapter
final TypeAdapter<Dataset> datasetTypeAdapter = new TypeAdapter<Dataset>() {
#Override
public void write(final JsonWriter out, final Dataset dataset) {
// Omitted for brevity
throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
}
#Override
public Dataset read(final JsonReader in)
throws IOException {
in.beginObject();
String table = null;
long update = 0;
List<Map<String, Object>> lists = null;
while ( in.hasNext() ) {
final String name = in.nextName();
switch ( name ) {
case "table":
table = stringTypeAdapter.read(in);
break;
case "update":
update = primitiveLongTypeAdapter.read(in);
break;
default:
lists = stringToObjectMapListTypeAdapter.read(in);
break;
}
}
in.endObject();
return new Dataset(table, update, lists);
}
}.nullSafe(); // Making the type adapter null-safe
#SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
final TypeAdapter<T> typeAdapter = (TypeAdapter<T>) datasetTypeAdapter;
return typeAdapter;
}
})
.create();
final Dataset dataset = gson.fromJson(jsonReader, Dataset.class);
System.out.println(dataset.lists);
The code above would print then:
[{column5=11.0, column6=yyy}, {column3=22.0, column4=zzz}]