Deserialize JSON with Jackson into Polymorphic Types - A Complete Example is giving me a compile error

As promised, I'm putting an example for how to use annotations to serialize/deserialize polymorphic objects, I based this example in the Animal class from the tutorial you were reading.

First of all your Animal class with the Json Annotations for the subclasses.

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonIgnoreProperties;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonSubTypes;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonTypeInfo;

@JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown = true)
@JsonTypeInfo(use = JsonTypeInfo.Id.NAME, include = JsonTypeInfo.As.PROPERTY)
@JsonSubTypes({
    @JsonSubTypes.Type(value = Dog.class, name = "Dog"),

    @JsonSubTypes.Type(value = Cat.class, name = "Cat") }
)
public abstract class Animal {

    private String name;

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

}

Then your subclasses, Dog and Cat.

public class Dog extends Animal {

    private String breed;

    public Dog() {

    }

    public Dog(String name, String breed) {
        setName(name);
        setBreed(breed);
    }

    public String getBreed() {
        return breed;
    }

    public void setBreed(String breed) {
        this.breed = breed;
    }
}

public class Cat extends Animal {

    public String getFavoriteToy() {
        return favoriteToy;
    }

    public Cat() {}

    public Cat(String name, String favoriteToy) {
        setName(name);
        setFavoriteToy(favoriteToy);
    }

    public void setFavoriteToy(String favoriteToy) {
        this.favoriteToy = favoriteToy;
    }

    private String favoriteToy;

}

As you can see, there is nothing special for Cat and Dog, the only one that know about them is the abstract class Animal, so when deserializing, you'll target to Animal and the ObjectMapper will return the actual instance as you can see in the following test:

public class Test {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();

        Animal myDog = new Dog("ruffus","english shepherd");

        Animal myCat = new Cat("goya", "mice");

        try {
            String dogJson = objectMapper.writeValueAsString(myDog);

            System.out.println(dogJson);

            Animal deserializedDog = objectMapper.readValue(dogJson, Animal.class);

            System.out.println("Deserialized dogJson Class: " + deserializedDog.getClass().getSimpleName());

            String catJson = objectMapper.writeValueAsString(myCat);

            Animal deseriliazedCat = objectMapper.readValue(catJson, Animal.class);

            System.out.println("Deserialized catJson Class: " + deseriliazedCat.getClass().getSimpleName());



        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

    }
}

Output after running the Test class:

{"@type":"Dog","name":"ruffus","breed":"english shepherd"}

Deserialized dogJson Class: Dog

{"@type":"Cat","name":"goya","favoriteToy":"mice"}

Deserialized catJson Class: Cat

Hope this helps,

Jose Luis

You need only one line before the declaration of the class Animal for correct polymorphic serialization/deserialization:

@JsonTypeInfo(use = JsonTypeInfo.Id.CLASS, include = JsonTypeInfo.As.PROPERTY, property = "@class")
public abstract class Animal {
   ...
}

This line means: add a meta-property on serialization or read a meta-property on deserialization (include = JsonTypeInfo.As.PROPERTY) called "@class" (property = "@class") that holds the fully-qualified Java class name (use = JsonTypeInfo.Id.CLASS).

So, if you create a JSON directly (without serialization) remember to add the meta-property "@class" with the desired class name for correct deserialization.

More information here

A simple way to enable polymorphic serialization / deserialization via Jackson library is to globally configure the Jackson object mapper (jackson.databind.ObjectMapper) to add information, such as the concrete class type, for certain kinds of classes, such as abstract classes.

To do that, just make sure your mapper is configured correctly. For example:

Option 1: Support polymorphic serialization / deserialization for abstract classes (and Object typed classes)

jacksonObjectMapper.enableDefaultTyping(
    ObjectMapper.DefaultTyping.OBJECT_AND_NON_CONCRETE); 

Option 2: Support polymorphic serialization / deserialization for abstract classes (and Object typed classes), and arrays of those types.

jacksonObjectMapper.enableDefaultTyping(
    ObjectMapper.DefaultTyping.NON_CONCRETE_AND_ARRAYS); 

Reference: https://github.com/FasterXML/jackson-docs/wiki/JacksonPolymorphicDeserialization