How to deserialize json to an abstract class in spring-boot - json

Question

In my Application i have something like this.
public class Question{}
public class MCQ extends Question{}
public class TrueAndFalse Question{}
public class Match Question{}
and in my RestController i have a service that adds question.
#RequestMapping(value = "/game/question/add", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public Question addQuuestion(#RequestParam("gameId") long id, #RequestBody Question question)
But i get an error when i try to call this service as i send json file with different structures one for MCQ, TrueAndFalse and Match.
so is it possible to deserialize the received json to Question abstract class.
And thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can create a custom deserializer which will create Question instances based on json payload properties.
For example if the Question class looks like this:
public class Question {
private final String name;
#JsonCreator
Question(#JsonProperty("name") String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public String getName() {
return name;
}
}
And sub-class TrueAndFalse:
public class TrueAndFalse extends Question {
private final String description;
#JsonCreator
TrueAndFalse(#JsonProperty("name") String name,
#JsonProperty("description") String description) {
super(name);
this.description = description;
}
public String getDescription() {
return description;
}
}
Then you can create a deserializer, which will create an instance of TrueAndFale sub-class by checking if it has description property:
public class QuestionDeserializer extends JsonDeserializer<Question> {
#Override
public Question deserialize(JsonParser p, DeserializationContext ctx) throws IOException {
ObjectCodec codec = p.getCodec();
JsonNode tree = codec.readTree(p);
if (tree.has("description")) {
return codec.treeToValue(tree, TrueAndFalse.class);
}
// Other types...
throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Cannot deserialize to a known type");
}
}
And afterwards, make sure to register it on the object mapper:
#Configuration
public class ObjectMapperConfiguration {
#Bean
public ObjectMapper objectMapper() {
SimpleModule module = new SimpleModule();
module.addDeserializer(Question.class, new QuestionDeserializer());
return new ObjectMapper().registerModules(module);
}
}