Java JSON serialization - best practice

I need to implement JSON serialization for some objects, and I've encountered a problem when it came to integration with generic collections.

All serializable classes implement this interface (JSONObject comes from this library):

interface JSONSerializable{
    public JSONObject dump() throws JSONException //serializes object
    public void load(JSONObject obj) throws JSONExcept开发者_运维技巧ion //deserializes object
}

Code for my collection based on java.util.list looks more or less like this:

class AwesomeList<T extends JSONSerializable> implements JSONSerializable{
    private LinkedList<T> items = new LinkedList<T>();
    ...
    ...

    public JSONObject dump() throws JSONException {
        JSONObject result = new JSONObject();
        JSONArray a = new JSONArray();
        for(T i : items){
            a.put(i.dump());
        }
        result.put("items", a);
        return result;
    }

    public void load(JSONObject obj) throws JSONException{
        //here is my problem
    }
}

My problem is: When I load AwesomeList from JSONObject, I need to create its elements but it's impossible since java forbids me to write

T newItem = new T();
newItem.load(obj);

How should I modify my approach to this task?

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Are you tied to this library? Google Gson is very popular. I have myself not used it with Generics but their front page says Gson considers support for Generics very important.

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As others have hinted, you should consider dumping org.json's library. It's pretty much obsolete these days, and trying to work around its problems is waste of time.

But to specific question; type variable T just does not have any information to help you, as it is little more than compile-time information. Instead you need to pass actual class (as 'Class cls' argument), and you can then create an instance with 'cls.newInstance()'.

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Well, when writing it out to file, you do know what class T is, so you can store that in dump. Then, when reading it back in, you can dynamically call it using reflection.

public JSONObject dump() throws JSONException {
    JSONObject result = new JSONObject();
    JSONArray a = new JSONArray();
    for(T i : items){
        a.put(i.dump());
        // inside this i.dump(), store "class-name"
    }
    result.put("items", a);
    return result;
}

public void load(JSONObject obj) throws JSONException {
    JSONArray arrayItems = obj.getJSONArray("items");
    for (int i = 0; i < arrayItems.length(); i++) {
        JSONObject item = arrayItems.getJSONObject(i);
        String className = item.getString("class-name");
        try {
            Class<?> clazzy = Class.forName(className);
            T newItem = (T) clazzy.newInstance();
            newItem.load(obj);
            items.add(newItem);
        } catch (InstantiationException e) {
            // whatever
        } catch (IllegalAccessException e) {
            // whatever
        } catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
            // whatever
        }
    }