Is it possible to pass a java.util.Stream to Gson? - json

Question

I'm currently working on a project where I need to fetch a large amount of data from the Database and parse it into a specific Json format, I already have built my custom Serializers and Its working properly when i pass a List to Gson. But as I was already working with Streams from my JPA Layer, I thought I could pass the Stream down to the Gson parser so that it could transform it directly to my Json data. But I'm getting an empty Json object instead of a correctly populated one.
So, if anyone could point to me a way to make Gson work with Java 8 Streams or if this isn't possible currently.. i could not find anything on Google, so i came to Stackoverflow.

Answer 1

You could use JsonWriter to streaming your data to output stream:
public void writeJsonStream(OutputStream out, Stream<DataObject> data) throws IOException {
try(JsonWriter writer = new JsonWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(out, "UTF-8"))) {
writer.setIndent(" ");
writer.beginArray();
data.forEach(d -> {
d.beginObject();
d.name("yourField").value(d.getYourField());
....
d.endObject();
});
writer.endArray();
}
}
Note that you're in charge of controling the json structure.
That is, if your DataObject contains nested Object, you have to write beginObject()/endObject() respectively. The same goes for nested array.

Answer 2

It is not as trivial as one would expect, but it can be done in a generic way.
When you look into the Javadoc to TypeAdapterFactory, they provide a very simplistic way of writing a TypeAdapterFactory for a custom type. Alas, it does not work as expected because of problems with element type detection. The proper way to do this can be found in Gson-internal CollectionTypeAdapterFactory. It is quite complex, but taking what's necessary one can come up with something like that:
final class StreamTypeAdapterFactory implements TypeAdapterFactory {
#SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
#Override
public <T> TypeAdapter<T> create(Gson gson, TypeToken<T> typeToken) {
Type type = typeToken.getType();
Class<? super T> rawType = typeToken.getRawType();
if (!Stream.class.isAssignableFrom(rawType)) {
return null;
}
Type elementType = ExtraGsonTypes.getStreamElementType(type, rawType);
TypeAdapter<?> elementAdapter = gson.getAdapter(TypeToken.get(elementType));
return (TypeAdapter<T>) new StreamTypeAdapter<>(elementAdapter);
}
private static class StreamTypeAdapter<E> extends TypeAdapter<Stream<E>> {
private final TypeAdapter<E> elementAdapter;
StreamTypeAdapter(TypeAdapter<E> elementAdapter) {
this.elementAdapter = elementAdapter;
}
public void write(JsonWriter out, Stream<E> value) throws IOException {
out.beginArray();
for (E element : iterable(value)) {
elementAdapter.write(out, element);
}
out.endArray();
}
public Stream<E> read(JsonReader in) throws IOException {
Stream.Builder<E> builder = Stream.builder();
in.beginArray();
while (in.hasNext()) {
builder.add(elementAdapter.read(in));
}
in.endArray();
return builder.build();
}
}
private static <T> Iterable<T> iterable(Stream<T> stream) {
return stream::iterator;
}
}
The ExtraGsonTypes is a special class that I used to circumvent package-private access to $Gson$Types.getSupertype method. It's a hack that works if you're not using JDK 9's modules - you simply place this class in the same package as $Gson$Types:
package com.google.gson.internal;
import java.lang.reflect.*;
import java.util.stream.Stream;
public final class ExtraGsonTypes {
public static Type getStreamElementType(Type context, Class<?> contextRawType) {
return getContainerElementType(context, contextRawType, Stream.class);
}
private static Type getContainerElementType(Type context, Class<?> contextRawType, Class<?> containerSupertype) {
Type containerType = $Gson$Types.getSupertype(context, contextRawType, containerSupertype);
if (containerType instanceof WildcardType) {
containerType = ((WildcardType)containerType).getUpperBounds()[0];
}
if (containerType instanceof ParameterizedType) {
return ((ParameterizedType) containerType).getActualTypeArguments()[0];
}
return Object.class;
}
}
(I filed an issue about that in GitHub)
You use it in the following way:
Gson gson = new GsonBuilder()
.registerTypeAdapterFactory(new StreamTypeAdapterFactory())
.create();
System.out.println(gson.toJson(Stream.of(1, 2, 3)));