After a long fight with generics and type erasure, I finally did it.
So I'm posting this for whoever has the same issue like me and needs a solution without freaking out.
My ErrorEntity and my SuccessfulEntity are still the same, but I created a new interface called RepositoryListener, like this:
public interface RepositoryListener {
public abstract void onErrorResponse(int code, String details);
public abstract void onSuccessfulResponse(int code, Object obj);
public abstract void onSuccessfulResponse2(int code, List<Object> obj);
}
Then I made a class, VolleyRestClient, like this:
public class VolleyRestClient extends RestClient {
private final DefaultRetryPolicy mRetryPolicy;
private final RequestQueue mQueue;
private final Gson gson = new Gson();
public VolleyRestClient(Context context) {
// Default retry policy
mRetryPolicy = new DefaultRetryPolicy(2000, 3, DefaultRetryPolicy.DEFAULT_BACKOFF_MULT);
mQueue = Volley.newRequestQueue(context);
}
public RequestQueue getQueue() {
// Method to push requests for image download
return mQueue;
}
@Override
public void GET(boolean obj, boolean needAuth, String url, Type type,
RepositoryListener listener) {
// Choose which listener to construct
Response.Listener<myResponse> mListener = obj ?
// This uses objects
makeSuccessfulListener(listener, type) :
// This uses list of objects
makeSuccessfulListener2(listener, type);
myRequest mRequest =
new myRequest(Request.Method.GET, needAuth, url,
mListener, makeErrorListener(listener));
mRequest.setRetryPolicy(mRetryPolicy);
mQueue.add(mRequest);
}
@Override
public void POST(boolean needAuth, String url, String body, Type type, RepositoryListener listener) {
myRequest mRequest = new myRequest(Request.Method.POST, needAuth, url, body,
makeSuccessfulListener(listener, type), makeErrorListener(listener));
mRequest.setRetryPolicy(mRetryPolicy);
mQueue.add(mRequest);
}
@Override
public void DELETE(boolean needAuth, String url, Type type, RepositoryListener listener) {
myRequest mRequest =
new myRequest(Request.Method.DELETE, needAuth, url,
makeSuccessfulListener(listener, type), makeErrorListener(listener));
mRequest.setRetryPolicy(mRetryPolicy);
mQueue.add(mRequest);
}
private Response.Listener<myRequest> makeSuccessfulListener
(final RepositoryListener listener, final Type type) {
// TODO: test this method and implement lists
if (listener == null) {
return null;
} else {
return new Response.Listener<myRequest>() {
@Override
public void onResponse(myRequest response) {
SuccessfulEntity<Object> obj = gson.fromJson(response.getBody(), type);
listener.onSuccessfulResponse(response.getCode(), obj.getData());
}
};
}
}
private Response.Listener<myRequest> makeSuccessfulListener2
(final RepositoryListener listener, final Type type) {
// TODO: test lists
if (listener == null) {
return null;
} else {
return new Response.Listener<myRequest>() {
@Override
public void onResponse(myReqyest response) {
SuccessfulEntity<List<Object>> obj = gson.fromJson(response.getBody(), type);
listener.onSuccessfulResponse2(response.getCode(), obj.getData());
}
};
}
}
private Response.ErrorListener makeErrorListener(final RepositoryListener listener) {
return new Response.ErrorListener() {
@Override
public void onErrorResponse(VolleyError error) {
try {
String jError = new String(error.networkResponse.data);
ErrorEntity mError = gson.fromJson(jError, ErrorEntity.class);
// Invoke listener closure
listener.onErrorResponse(error.networkResponse.statusCode, mError.getDetails());
} catch (Exception e) {
listener.onErrorResponse(404, e.getMessage());
}
}
};
}
}
This is very dependant by my needs, but I'll explain the general concept.
So I have a custom request, as explained in my question, and I want to parse it to the correct data type.
To be more specific, I could have a JSONArray data only on GET requests (paginated elements, etc...) so I need to find a way to distinguish between this two cases (of course, I know in which cases I'll get a List or an Object).
We cannot simply create POJO from Json within a generic class using its type (because Java Type Erasure), so we need object type upfront.
But what we can do is:
in our custom request, on parseNetworkResponse, do something like that:
@Override
protected Response<myResponse> parseNetworkResponse(NetworkResponse response) {
try {
// Using server charset
myResponse mResponse = new myResponse();
mResponse.setCode(response.statusCode);
mResponse.setBody(new String(response.data,
HttpHeaderParser.parseCharset(response.headers)));
// Return new response
return Response.success(mResponse, HttpHeaderParser.parseCacheHeaders(response));
} catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
// Normally use 'utf-8'
return Response.error(new ParseError(e));
}
}
In other words, copy the raw string response body onto a new object myResponse;
Response body will be eventually parsed in VolleyRestClient with the appropriate type passed as a GET/DELETE/POST argument;
makeSuccessfulListener and makeSuccessfulListener2 construct a Response.Listener from a RepositoryListener, which has 3 methods to override: onSuccessfulResponse for objects data, onSuccessfulResponse2 for list of objects data, onErrorResponse for 4XX/5XX errors;
- Our data object/list will be parsed to more generics type (List and Object) and then passed to our custom listener RepositoryListener.
A full example for this approach:
public void getNewLogin(String nickname, String password,
final TextView author, final TextView title, final TextView text) {
String json =
(new StringBuilder()
.append("{ \"nickname\": \"")
.append(nickname)
.append("\", \"password\": \"")
.append(password)
.append("\" }")).toString();
mRest.POST(false, "http://192.168.0.104:8000/api/session", json,
new TypeToken<SuccessfulEntity<Login>>(){}.getType(),
new RepositoryListener() {
@Override
public void onSuccessfulResponse2(int code, List<Object> obj) {
// Nothing happens here
}
@Override
public void onSuccessfulResponse(int code, Object obj) {
UserSession mInstance = UserSession.getInstance(null);
Login newLogin = (Login) obj;
title.setText(newLogin.getToken());
mInstance.setToken(newLogin.getToken());
Log.i("onSuccessfulResponse", mInstance.getToken());
Log.i("onSuccessfulResponse", mInstance.getmAuthorizationToken());
if (newLogin.getUser() != null) {
author.setText(newLogin.getUser().getNickname());
text.setText(newLogin.getUser().getUniversity());
}
}
@Override
public void onErrorResponse(int code, String error) {
Log.i("onErrorResponse", error);
}
});
mRest is a VolleyRestClient object, which performs a POST request to that address with Type constructed by Gson TypeToken (remember, our body is a SuccessfulEntity).
Since we'll have an Object data for sure, we'll just override onSuccessfulResponse, cast data object to the same type T of SuccessfulEntity used in TypeToken, and do our dirty work.
I don't know if I was clear, this approach works, if some of you needs some clarification, just ask :)
