CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javajsonserializationgson
Pavan
Pavan

Reputation: 1

Writing a Gson TypeAdapter for a class that has its own implementation of JSON Serialization

I am trying to serialize a class where one of the members comes with its own implementation of JSON Serialization. I'm not sure how to include it with the rest of the properties. For example

class Foo {
    String fieldA;
    String fieldB;
    Bar bar;
}

class Bar has a method toJSONString(). Currently I am including it by registering a JsonSerializer as TypeAdapter something like :

class BarSerializer implements JsonSerializer<Bar> {
   @Override
   public JsonElement serialize(Bar bar, Type type, JsonSerializationContext ctxt) {
       return new JsonParser().parse(bar.toJSONString());
   }

}

I cannot change the code of Bar or I cannot serialize it using its fields directly as it has some deeply nested structure and I don't have any control over its member class types. As you can see in the above method the Bar object is serialized, parsed and serialized again. Is there any other simple/efficient way of serializing Bar within Foo?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 757

Answers (1)

Devrim
Devrim

Reputation: 15543

If you want an efficient way, it is suggested to use TypeAdapter

Below explanation is copied from JsonSerializer's document:

New applications should prefer TypeAdapter, whose streaming API is more efficient than this interface's tree API.

Check out this link for some good examples about TypeAdapter.

Upvotes: 1

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