Custom serializer - deserializer using GSON for a list of BasicNameValuePairs

Question

I'm trying to implement a custom gson serializer/deserialiser for some list of BasicNameValuePair objects.

I saw the partial solution code (for serialization) here: How do I get Gson to serialize a list of basic name value pairs?

However I wanted to implement also deserialization and I tried my chances and the code is here:

package dto;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import org.apache.http.message.BasicNameValuePair;


import com.google.gson.TypeAdapter;
import com.google.gson.stream.JsonReader;
import com.google.gson.stream.JsonWriter;


    public class KeyValuePairSerializer extends TypeAdapter<List<BasicNameValuePair>> {
        @Override
        public void write(JsonWriter out, List<BasicNameValuePair> data) throws IOException {
            out.beginObject();
            for(int i=0; i<data.size();i++){
                out.name(data.get(i).getName());
                out.value(data.get(i).getValue());
            }
            out.endObject();
        }

        @Override
        public List<BasicNameValuePair> read(JsonReader in) throws IOException {
            ArrayList<BasicNameValuePair> list=new ArrayList<BasicNameValuePair>();
             in.beginObject();
             while (in.hasNext()) {
               String key = in.nextName();
               String value = in.nextString();
               list.add(new BasicNameValuePair(key,value));
             }  
             in.endObject();   
             return list;
        }

}

Code to initialize and fill the list

ArrayList<BasicNameValuePair> postParameters=new ArrayList<BasicNameValuePair>();
postParameters.add(new BasicNameValuePair("some_key","some_value"));

And here is the code to use the new KeyValuePairSerializer class:

        GsonBuilder gsonBuilder= new GsonBuilder();
        gsonBuilder.registerTypeAdapter(KeyValuePairSerializer.class, new KeyValuePairSerializer());
        Gson gson1=gsonBuilder.create();

        //serialization works just fine in the next line
        String jsonUpdate=gson1.toJson(postParameters, KeyValuePairSerializer.class);


        ArrayList<BasicNameValuePair> postParameters2 = new ArrayList<BasicNameValuePair>();
        //postParameters2 = gson1.fromJson(jsonUpdate, KeyValuePairSerializer.class); //? how to cast properly
        //deserialization throws an error, it can't cast from ArrayList<BasicNameValuePair> to KeyValuePairSerializer
        gson1.fromJson(jsonUpdate, KeyValuePairSerializer.class);

The problem is that it throws an exception at the end and I don't know where exactly is the problem and still not sure how to write the last line to get the result back in the new postParameters2 ArrayList.

Answer 1

Adapted from the GSON Collections Examples:

GsonBuilder gsonBuilder= new GsonBuilder();
gsonBuilder.registerTypeAdapter(KeyValuePairSerializer.class, new KeyValuePairSerializer());
Gson gson1=gsonBuilder.create();

Type collectionType = new TypeToken<ArrayList<BasicNameValuePair>>(){}.getType();
ArrayList<BasicNameValuePair> postParameters2 = gson1.fromJson(jsonUpdate, collectionType);