json - deserializing generics with gson

Question

I am using GSON 1.4 and serializing an object with two generic arraylist<myObject> as follows String data = Gson.toJson(object, object.class). When I desirialize it I do gson.fromJson(json, type);

sadly I get

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Can not set java.util.ArrayList field ... to java.util.LinkedList

Why is that ? GSON doc notes that if I serialize with object.class parameter it supports generics. any idea? thanks.

my class is :

public class IndicesAndWeightsParams {

    public List<IndexParams> indicesParams;
    public List<WeightParams> weightsParams;

    public IndicesAndWeightsParams() {
        indicesParams = new ArrayList<IndexParams>();
        weightsParams = new ArrayList<WeightParams>();
    }
    public IndicesAndWeightsParams(ArrayList<IndexParams> indicesParams, ArrayList<WeightParams> weightsParams) {
        this.indicesParams = indicesParams;
        this.weightsParams = weightsParams;
    }
}    
public class IndexParams {

    public IndexParams() {
    }
    public IndexParams(String key, float value, String name) {
      this.key = key;
      this.value = value;
      this.name = name;
    }
    public String key;
    public float value;
    public String name;
}

Answer 1

Gson has some limitations regarding collections because of Java's type erasure. You can read more about it here.

From your question I see you're using both ArrayList and LinkedList. Are you sure you didn't mean to use just List, the interface?

This code works:

List<String> listOfStrings = new ArrayList<String>();

listOfStrings.add("one");
listOfStrings.add("two");

Gson gson = new Gson();
String json = gson.toJson(listOfStrings);

System.out.println(json);

Type type = new TypeToken<Collection<String>>(){}.getType();

List<String> fromJson = gson.fromJson(json, type);

System.out.println(fromJson);

Update: I changed your class to this, so I don't have to mess around with other classes:

class IndicesAndWeightsParams {

    public List<Integer> indicesParams;
    public List<String> weightsParams;

    public IndicesAndWeightsParams() {
        indicesParams = new ArrayList<Integer>();
        weightsParams = new ArrayList<String>();
    }
    public IndicesAndWeightsParams(ArrayList<Integer> indicesParams, ArrayList<String> weightsParams) {
        this.indicesParams = indicesParams;
        this.weightsParams = weightsParams;
    }
}

And using this code, everything works for me:

ArrayList<Integer> indices = new ArrayList<Integer>();
ArrayList<String> weights = new ArrayList<String>();

indices.add(2);
indices.add(5);

weights.add("fifty");
weights.add("twenty");

IndicesAndWeightsParams iaw = new IndicesAndWeightsParams(indices, weights);

Gson gson = new Gson();
String string = gson.toJson(iaw);

System.out.println(string);

IndicesAndWeightsParams fromJson = gson.fromJson(string, IndicesAndWeightsParams.class);

System.out.println(fromJson.indicesParams);
System.out.println(fromJson.weightsParams);