Gson - Setting object reference on-the-fly using InstanceCreator

Question

I\'m stuck in a problem where I need to set reference of my object being parsed to its child objects during deserialization using Gson and InstanceCreator

Answer 1

You should definitely use GraphAdapterBuilder.

As you said in the comment under @Braj 's answer,

workshift is set transient for a reason so that it won't serialize this object when serializing visit object. If its not marked as transient then the serialization falls into stack overflow exception - by creating an unstoppable loop

This has a simple solution.

Workshift.java

public class Workshift {
    private final transient Context context;
    private final Visit visit;
    //for testing
    private String workshift_description;

    public Workshift(Context context,String id) {
        this.workshift_description=id;
        this.context = context;
        this.visit = new Visit(this);

    }
    public String getId() {
        return workshift_description;
    }

    public void setId(String id) {
        this.workshift_description = id;
    }
    public String toString() {
        return "[Workshift element => { WD: "+this.workshift_description+", VD : "+this.visit.getVisit_description()+"}";
    }
}

Visit.java

public class Visit {

    private final /* transient  */ Workshift workshift;

    public Visit(Workshift ws) {
        this.workshift = ws;

    }
    public String getVisit_description() {
        return "visit containing  "+ workshift.getId();
    }

}

The trick resides here:

GsonBuilder gsonBuilder = new GsonBuilder();
        new GraphAdapterBuilder()
        .addType(Visit.class)
        .addType(Workshift.class)
        .registerOn(gsonBuilder);

Putting all together,

public static void main(String[] args) {

        Workshift[] workshifts = new Workshift[10];
        for (int i = 0; i < workshifts.length; i++) {
            //Replace Context(i) for the real one
            workshifts[i] = new Workshift(new Context(i), "Workshift#"
                    + i);
        }
        System.out.println("Original Workshifts array:");
        for (int i = 0; i < workshifts.length; i++) {
            System.out.println(workshifts[i]);
        }
        System.out.println("===================================");

        GsonBuilder gsonBuilder = new GsonBuilder();
        new GraphAdapterBuilder()
        .addType(Visit.class)
        .addType(Workshift.class)
        .registerOn(gsonBuilder);

        Gson gson = gsonBuilder.setPrettyPrinting().create();
        String serialized = gson.toJson(workshifts);
        // System.out.println(serialized);
        Workshift[] w_array = gson.fromJson(serialized, Workshift[].class);
        // System.out.println(gson.toJson(w_array));

        System.out.println("Des-serialized Workshifts array:");
        for (int i = 0; i < w_array.length; i++) {
            System.out.println(w_array[i]);
        }
        System.out.println("===================================");

Output:

Original Workshifts array:
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#0, VD : visit containing  Workshift#0}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#1, VD : visit containing  Workshift#1}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#2, VD : visit containing  Workshift#2}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#3, VD : visit containing  Workshift#3}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#4, VD : visit containing  Workshift#4}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#5, VD : visit containing  Workshift#5}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#6, VD : visit containing  Workshift#6}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#7, VD : visit containing  Workshift#7}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#8, VD : visit containing  Workshift#8}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#9, VD : visit containing  Workshift#9}
===================================
Des-serialized Workshifts array:
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#0, VD : visit containing  Workshift#0}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#1, VD : visit containing  Workshift#1}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#2, VD : visit containing  Workshift#2}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#3, VD : visit containing  Workshift#3}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#4, VD : visit containing  Workshift#4}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#5, VD : visit containing  Workshift#5}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#6, VD : visit containing  Workshift#6}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#7, VD : visit containing  Workshift#7}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#8, VD : visit containing  Workshift#8}
[Workshift element => { WD: Workshift#9, VD : visit containing  Workshift#9}
===================================

There's no StackOverflow error.

if you un-comment the line

// System.out.println(serialized);

The output would be like this:

[
  {
    "0x1": {
      "visit": "0x2",
      "workshift_description": "Workshift#0"
    },
    "0x2": {
      "workshift": "0x1"
    }
  },
  {
    "0x1": {
      "visit": "0x2",
      "workshift_description": "Workshift#1"
    },
    "0x2": {
      "workshift": "0x1"
    }
  },
  {
    "0x1": {
      "visit": "0x2",
      "workshift_description": "Workshift#2"
    },
    "0x2": {
      "workshift": "0x1"
    }
  },
  {
    "0x1": {
      "visit": "0x2",
      "workshift_description": "Workshift#3"
    },
    "0x2": {
      "workshift": "0x1"
    }
  },
  {
    "0x1": {
      "visit": "0x2",
      "workshift_description": "Workshift#4"
    },
    "0x2": {
      "workshift": "0x1"
    }
  },
  {
    "0x1": {
      "visit": "0x2",
      "workshift_description": "Workshift#5"
    },
    "0x2": {
      "workshift": "0x1"
    }
  },
  {
    "0x1": {
      "visit": "0x2",
      "workshift_description": "Workshift#6"
    },
    "0x2": {
      "workshift": "0x1"
    }
  },
  {
    "0x1": {
      "visit": "0x2",
      "workshift_description": "Workshift#7"
    },
    "0x2": {
      "workshift": "0x1"
    }
  },
  {
    "0x1": {
      "visit": "0x2",
      "workshift_description": "Workshift#8"
    },
    "0x2": {
      "workshift": "0x1"
    }
  },
  {
    "0x1": {
      "visit": "0x2",
      "workshift_description": "Workshift#9"
    },
    "0x2": {
      "workshift": "0x1"
    }
  }

]

That's because Gson is replacing your references, in order to avoid that stack overflow exception. It's like emulating pointers

Hope it helps.

Note: Remember to copy the files GraphAdapterBuilder.java and change the line

private final ConstructorConstructor constructorConstructor = new ConstructorConstructor();

with

private final ConstructorConstructor constructorConstructor = new ConstructorConstructor(instanceCreators);

It won't compile otherwise. Maybe it's fixed right now.