Passing the Class in java of a generic list?

Question

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         


        

Answer 1

If you are using SpringFramework you could use ParameterizedTypeReference as follows:

 restClient.getDeserializedJSON(ParameterizedTypeReference<List<MyClass>>(){},url);

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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").

Answer 4

You can't. You'd have to use unsafe cast:

Class<List<MyClass>> clazz = 
   (Class<List<MyClass>>) new ArrayList<MyClass>().getClass();