Is It possible to deserialize a json to POJO's while some of the children objects remain a json string? Example:
{
a_num: 5,
an_object : { ... },
a_string: "a cool string"
}
to a POJO with:
int a_num;
//instead of: ObjectType an_object;
String an_object;
String a_string;
You can write custom deserializer for gson api you can implement JsonDeserializer
for example:
public class MyClass implements JsonDeserializer<MyClass>{
//fields and constructor
@Override
public MyClass deserialize(JsonElement json, Type type,
JsonDeserializationContext context) throws JsonParseException {
JsonObject jobject = (JsonObject) json;
return new MyClass(
jobject.get("a_num").getAsInt(),
jobject.get("an_object").getAsString(),
jobject.get("a_string").getAsString()
);
}
}
From the answer of Jigar I could deduce a simpler solution for this case of problem.
A very easy way to save the time of mapping every variable is to write a deserializer for the string class and then declare the wanted variable as a string.
public class StringDeserializer implements JsonDeserializer<String> {
@Override
public String deserialize(JsonElement jsonElement, Type type, JsonDeserializationContext jsonDeserializationContext) throws JsonParseException {
return jsonElement.toString();
}
}
While using following POJO:
int a_num;
String an_object;
String a_string;
And finally registering the TypeAdapter:
private static Gson gson = new GsonBuilder()
.registerTypeAdapter(String.class, new StringDeserializer()).create();
With this deserializer it is possible to deserialize any field you want as a string. Just type it to a string in the POJO.
TypeAdapter.