If I put List<Child> into an Intent, then I retrieve List<Parent> from the other Activity

Question

These are my model classes:

public class Animal implements Parcelable{   
//parcelable implementation
}

public class Cat extends Animal {   
}

public class Dog extends Animal {
}

I want to pass an Array of Animal from an Activity to another using Intent.putExtra(String name, Parcelable [] value).

So I do this:

List<Animal> animals = new Array[3];
animals[0] = new Dog();
animals[1] = new Cat();
animals[2] = new Dog();

Intent.putExtra("myAnimals", animals ).

When I try to retrieve the array from the other Activity with:

Parcelable[] p = (Parcelable[])data.getParcelableArrayExtra("myAnimals");

I DON'T get an array like this:

[0]Dog
[1]Cat
[2]Dog

I get an array like this:

[0]Animal
[1]Animal
[2]Animal

I don't understand If my logic is incorrect or when you pass an Array like mine to an Intent it is turned into an array of SuperClass objects.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Try to create a CREATOR field in every of your subclass, e.g.

public static final Parcelable.Creator<Cat> CREATOR
         = new Parcelable.Creator<Cat>() {
     public Cat createFromParcel(Parcel in) {
         return new Cat(in);
     }

     public Cat[] newArray(int size) {
         return new Cat[size];
     }
 };

Probably you only have this field in your base class Animal, so when Android tries to recreate the objects from Parcelable it can only call the CREATOR of Animal, so all your objects are Animals.