How to deserialize JSON field with dynamic type?

Question

In a request to the Reddit API, there is a field associated with each post called edited. This field either has a boolean value or if a post has been edited, has a long value which I think is the timestamp of when the post was edited. How can I deserialize this with GSON without knowing the type? If I try to deserialize into a Boolean value I get an exception if a timestamp is present.

Image below of JSON response:

Answer 1

Annotating the dynamic field with @JsonAdapter is probably the easiest way to work around this (assuming you have a DTO class):

final class Datum {

    @JsonAdapter(MaybeLongTypeAdapter.class)
    final Long edited = null;

}

Where MaybeLongTypeAdapter is as follows:

final class MaybeLongTypeAdapter
        extends TypeAdapter<Long> {

    private MaybeLongTypeAdapter() {
    }

    @Override
    public void write(final JsonWriter out, final Long value) {
        throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
    }

    @Override
    public Long read(final JsonReader in)
            throws IOException {
        switch ( in.peek() ) {
        case NULL:
            return null;
        case BOOLEAN:
            if ( in.nextBoolean() ) {
                throw new JsonSyntaxException("Unexpected `true` at " + in);
            }
            return null;
        case NUMBER:
            return in.nextLong();
        default:
            throw new JsonSyntaxException("Unexpected element at " + in);
        }
    }

}

The type adapter above is pretty self-descriptive. It can be implemented in a more generic way, of course, but it's out of scope here. Additionally, please note that it does not pick the original Long type adapter that can be re-configured in GsonBuilder. Example of use:

private static final Gson gson = new Gson();

private static final Type listOfDatumType = new TypeToken<List<Datum>>() {}.getType();

public static void main(final String... args) {
    final String json = "[{\"edited\": false},{\"edited\": 1527130582}]";
    final List<Datum> data = gson.fromJson(json, listOfDatumType);
    for ( final Datum datum : data ) {
        System.out.println(datum.edited);
    }
}

Output:

null
1527130582