Question

Ran into an issue with generics and array types that I am unable to solve. It boils down to this. In the following code, how can I convert a generic List into an Array of the same generic type, while using a factory method (“T convert(String value)”) to convert each individual element of the input generic List:

@Test
public void test(){
    List<String> integers = Arrays.asList("1", "2", "3", "4");

    Integer[] integerArray = new TypeConverter<Integer[]>(Integer[].class).convert(integers);

    assertEquals(4, integerArray.length);
    assertEquals(1, integerArray[0].intValue());
    assertEquals(2, integerArray[1].intValue());
    assertEquals(3, integerArray[2].intValue());
    assertEquals(4, integerArray[3].intValue());
}

public class TypeConverter<T>{
    Class<T> type;

    public TypeConverter(Class<T> type) {
        this.type = type;
    }

    T convert(List<String> values){

        List output = new ArrayList();

        for (String value : values) {
            //have to use Object.class here since I cant get the non-array type of T:
            output.add(new TypeConverter(type.getComponentType()).convert(value));
        }

        return (T) output.toArray();
    }

    T convert(String value){
        //convert to an int;
        if(type == Integer.class){
            return (T) new Integer(Integer.parseInt(value));
        }
        return null;
    }
}

As you can see, my naive approach was to simply use the toArray Method, and cast the result like so:

(T) value.toArray()

but this results in a ClassCastException:

java.lang.ClassCastException: [Ljava.lang.Object; cannot be cast to [Ljava.lang.Integer

Is there a way to solve this that I am not seeing or should I take another approach?

Edit

Here’s the concrete code that I am trying to fix. Specifically the visitArray() method:

https://github.com/johncarl81/transfuse/blob/master/transfuse/src/main/java/org/androidtransfuse/analysis/adapter/AnnotationTypeValueConverterVisitor.java

Answer 1

You may use the alternate version of List.toArray that takes as a parameter the type of the array you want to get.

toArray Method

You may create an empty array with some method of the Array class.

Array.newInstance

So having the expected type you just use Array.newInstance(type, 0); and pass in the result to the toArray method.

Edit:
Since your generic type is an array, you need to get the type of the components, try this:

Object[] array = (Object[]) Array.newInstance(type.getComponentType(), 0);
return (T) output.toArray(array);

Your value conversion method has a little something I’ll let you figure out how to solve 🙂

Cheers!