Force GSON to use specific constructor

Question

public class UserAction {
    private final UUID uuid;
    private String userId;
    /* more fields, setters and getters here */

    public UserAction(){
        this.uuid = UUID.fromString(new com.eaio.uuid.UUID().toString());
    }

    public UserAction(UUID uuid){
        this.uuid = uuid;
    }
    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object obj) {
        if (obj == null) {
            return false;
        }
        if (getClass() != obj.getClass()) {
            return false;
        }
        final UserAction other = (UserAction) obj;
        if (this.uuid != other.uuid && (this.uuid == null || !this.uuid.equals(other.uuid))) {
            return false;
        }
        return true;
    }

    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        int hash = 7;
        hash = 53 * hash + (this.uuid != null ? this.uuid.hashCode() : 0);
        return hash;
    }
}

I am using Gson to serilize and deserialize this class. As today I had to add a final UUID in this object. I have no problem serializing. I need to force gson to use public UserAction(UUID uuid) constructor when deserializing. How can I achieve that ?

Answer 1

You could implement a custom JsonDeserializer and register it with GSON.

class UserActionDeserializer implements JsonDeserializer<UserAction> {
    public UserAction deserialize(JsonElement json, Type typeOfT,
        JsonDeserializationContext context) throws JsonParseException {
        return new UserAction(UUID.fromString(json.getAsString());
}

GsonBuilder gson = new GsonBuilder();
gson.registerTypeAdapter(UserAction.class, new UserActionDeserializer());

Bear in mind that this code has not been tested.