The JSON format we want to work with uses a standard wrapper around business
objects or lists of business objects. So things look like this:
{ "version" : "1.0" , "data" : {
"name" : "frank" , "age" : 30
} }
Or
{ "version" : "1.0" , "data" : {
"make" : "BMW" , "color" : "yellow", "size" : "535", "price" : 500000
} }
The object inside the data tag, I want to marshall into an object of varying
types, depending on the REST method called. So in some cases it might be a
person (with a name and age) and in others a car. So from a java perspective
a Wrapper<Person> or Wrapper<Car>. Or sometimes Wrapper<List<Car>>.
The Java code would look something like this:
@POST
@Consumes("application/json")
@Produces("application/json")
public Wrapper<Person> updatePerson(Wrapper<Person> personWrapper) {
....
}
@POST
@Consumes("application/json")
@Produces("application/json")
public Wrapper<Car> updatePerson(Wrapper<Car> carWrapper) {
....
}
Is it simply the case that Jersey can not read the generics because they are
a compile time thing?
Is it possible to do something like this without needing to create a custom
wrapper for each contained object, basically forget about generics and hard
code the type for "data"? This is what we are doing right now, but it is
less than elegant. There is a CarWrapper and a Car bean, and also a
CarListWrapper.
I am considering scrapping Jersey and going with a Servlet + Jackson
solution. With this I can use a type definition object (like GenericEntity)
that is basically an empty instantiation that represents the type - sort of
a runtime generics hack. But I would really like to use Jersey because the
REST annotations are beautiful.
Thanks - any and all suggestions welcome.
isaac