当映射包含 DTO 列表的对象成功时，为什么映射 DTO 列表失败？

Question

I'm trying to map a YAML document to a complex DTO structure with Jackson and Kotlin, but seem to have run into a misunderstanding somewhere.

The YAML document I'm parsing is

item_names:
  - item:
      id: hummingbird/items/potion
    name: Potion

I'm modeling it in my system as

data class ItemDto(val id: String)

data class ItemNameDto(val item: ItemDto, val name: String)

data class ItemNamesList(@JsonProperty("item_names") val itemNames: List<ItemNameDto>)

    @Test
    fun `mvce`() {
        val mapper = ObjectMapper(YAMLFactory())
        mapper.registerModule(KotlinModule())

        val itemNameSource = "item_names:\n" +
            "  -\n" +
            "    item:\n" +
            "      id: hummingbird/items/potion\n" +
            "    name: Potion\n"

        val root = mapper.readTree(itemNameSource)
        val listObject: ItemNamesList = mapper.treeToValue(root)
        assertEquals("Potion", listObject.itemNames[0].name)
        System.out.println("root node to pojo container: $listObject")

        val itemNamesNode: JsonNode = root["item_names"]
        val list: List<ItemNameDto> = mapper.treeToValue(itemNamesNode)
        assertEquals("Potion", list[0].name)
        System.out.println("item_names node to list container: $listObject")
    }

The output of the test is:

root node to pojo container: ItemNamesList(itemNames=[ItemNameDto(item=ItemDto(id=hummingbird/items/potion), name=Potion)])

java.lang.ClassCastException: java.util.LinkedHashMap cannot be cast to hummingbird.item.name.ItemName

    at hummingbird.item.name.jackson.MapperTests.mvce(MapperTests.kt:103)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498)
    at org.junit.runners.model.FrameworkMethod$1.runReflectiveCall(FrameworkMethod.java:50)
    at org.junit.internal.runners.model.ReflectiveCallable.run(ReflectiveCallable.java:12)
    at org.junit.runners.model.FrameworkMethod.invokeExplosively(FrameworkMethod.java:47)
    at org.junit.internal.runners.statements.InvokeMethod.evaluate(InvokeMethod.java:17)
    at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.runLeaf(ParentRunner.java:325)
    at org.junit.runners.BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.runChild(BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.java:78)
    at org.junit.runners.BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.runChild(BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.java:57)
    at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$3.run(ParentRunner.java:290)
    at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$1.schedule(ParentRunner.java:71)
    at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.runChildren(ParentRunner.java:288)
    at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.access$000(ParentRunner.java:58)
    at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$2.evaluate(ParentRunner.java:268)
    at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.run(ParentRunner.java:363)
    at org.junit.runner.JUnitCore.run(JUnitCore.java:137)
    at com.intellij.junit4.JUnit4IdeaTestRunner.startRunnerWithArgs(JUnit4IdeaTestRunner.java:68)
    at com.intellij.rt.execution.junit.IdeaTestRunner$Repeater.startRunnerWithArgs(IdeaTestRunner.java:47)
    at com.intellij.rt.execution.junit.JUnitStarter.prepareStreamsAndStart(JUnitStarter.java:242)
    at com.intellij.rt.execution.junit.JUnitStarter.main(JUnitStarter.java:70)

What I'm stuck on is why mapping the source to an ItemNamesList works fine, but mapping the array of objects from root["item_names"] , which I think should give a List<ItemNameDto> returns a LinkedHashMap made up of LinkedHashMap s.

Answer 1

TL;DR answer:

Instead of

val list: List<ItemNameDto> = mapper.treeToValue(itemNamesNode)

you should write

val collectionType = mapper.typeFactory.constructCollectionType(List::class.java, ItemNameDto::class.java)
val list: List<ItemNameDto> = mapper.readValue(mapper.treeAsTokens(itemNamesNode), collectionType)

Explanation

Take a look at the actual implementation of treeToValue() :

inline fun <reified T> ObjectMapper.treeToValue(n: TreeNode): T = treeToValue(n, T::class.java)

T should be in your case a List<ItemNameDto> but because generics are erased on the JVM (more about that in this question), it is actually only a List<*> , so Jackson does not know what to do and converts the tree in a plain old Map.

When you want to force a specific type , a class definition is not enough (more about this here ) ! Luckily Jackson has some handy functions for this exact problem. constructCollectionType() creates a JavaType (not a JavaClass) with a specific type of your choosing, in this case Jackson knows what to do!

There is currently no way to do this without tokenizing the tree, see this github issue.

To make your code more readable you could introduce an extension function:

fun <T : Any> ObjectMapper.constructCollectionType(kClass: KClass<T>): CollectionType? {
  return typeFactory.constructCollectionType(List::class.java, kClass.java)
}