How to use Jackson to deserialise an array of objects

Question

The Jackson data binding documentation indicates that Jackson supports deserialising "Arrays of all supported types" but I can't figure out the exact syntax for this.

For a single object I would do this:

//json input
{
    "id" : "junk",
    "stuff" : "things"
}

//Java
MyClass instance = objectMapper.readValue(json, MyClass.class);

Now for an array I want to do this:

//json input
[{
    "id" : "junk",
    "stuff" : "things"
},
{
    "id" : "spam",
    "stuff" : "eggs"
}]

//Java
List<MyClass> entries = ?

Anyone know if there is a magic missing command? If not then what is the solution?

Answer 1

First create a mapper :

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;// in play 2.3
ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();

As Array:

MyClass[] myObjects = mapper.readValue(json, MyClass[].class);

As List:

List<MyClass> myObjects = mapper.readValue(jsonInput, new TypeReference<List<MyClass>>(){});

Another way to specify the List type:

List<MyClass> myObjects = mapper.readValue(jsonInput, mapper.getTypeFactory().constructCollectionType(List.class, MyClass.class));