How do I represent arbitrary data?

Suppose I need to parse JSON and the only sample I’ve seen is { "thing": {} }.

I’d like to let the type of thing be a dynamic object value, or even JsonValue, but I am not sure how to accomplish this.

import com.beust.klaxon.*

data class TopLevel(val thing: Thing)
data class Thing()

val klaxon = Klaxon()
klaxon.parse<TopLevel>("{ \"thing\": {} }")

This doesn’t work because data classes cannot have empty constructors, and I really want to allow TopLevel.thing to be a dynamic object.

I tried data class TopLevel(val thing: JsonValue) and it didn’t consider that a suitable constructor for the data.

Any suggestions?

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P.S. I tried to join #klaxon on Slack but a @jetbrains email was required.

[dvdsgl]

This works:

import com.beust.klaxon.*

data class Top(val thing: JsonObject)

val convertJsonObject = object: Converter {
    override fun canConvert(cls: Class<*>) = cls == JsonObject::class.java
    override fun toJson(value: Any): String = (value as JsonObject).toJsonString()
    override fun fromJson(jv: JsonValue): Any = jv.inside
}

fun main(args: Array<String>) {
	val klaxon = Klaxon().converter(convertJsonObject)
	val top = klaxon.parse<Top>("""{ "thing": { "name": 6 } }""")!!
	val json = klaxon.toJsonString(top)
	print(json)
}

[cbeust]

Oh nice find!