User guide is wrong: Inner classes can now be serialized/deserialized?

The user guide states:

https://sites.google.com/site/gson/gson-user-guide#TOC-Nested-Classes-including-
Inner-Classes-

"Gson can not automatically deserialize the pure inner classes since their 
no-args constructor also need a reference to the containing Object which is not 
available at the time of deserialization."

This is no longer true (I think because of UnsafeAllocator?), and should be 
documented. The example, which previously didn't work, now does. See the 
following:


public class A {
  public String a; 

  public class B {
    public String b; 

    public B() {
    }
  }

  public static void main(String[] arguments) {
    Gson gson = new Gson();
    B b = new A().new B();

    String json = gson.toJson(b);
    System.out.println("gson.toJson(" + b + ") = " + json);
    B b2 = gson.fromJson(json, B.class);
    System.out.println("gson.fromJson(..., B.class) = " + b2);
  }
}

The output of this is:

gson.toJson(co.mitro.core.server.data.A$B@7c97cb70) = {}
gson.fromJson(..., B.class) = co.mitro.core.server.data.A$B@b45ad3d

HOWEVER: If you try to reference the parent class from b2, you get a 
NullPointerException, which is fairly surprising and "dangerous." This needs to 
at least be documented! The debate about if this is the right default is a 
different discussion (I know that GsonBuilder.disableInnerClassSerialization() 
can turn this off)

Original issue reported on code.google.com by [e-mail] on 26 Sep 2013 at 2:27

[remyvrs]

My previous hack does not work for a tree where more than one instance of A is created. In case anyone needs it the solution applied by is : instead of
gsonBuilder.registerTypeAdapter(A.class, (InstanceCreator) type -> a); gsonBuilder.registerTypeAdapter(A.B.class, (InstanceCreator<A.B>) type -> a.new B());

I used :

	InnerClassInstanceCreator innerClassInstanceCreator = new InnerClassInstanceCreator();
	gsonBuilder.registerTypeAdapter(A.class, innerClassInstanceCreator);
	gsonBuilder.registerTypeAdapter(A.B.class, innerClassInstanceCreator);


private static class InnerClassInstanceCreator implements InstanceCreator<Object> {

	private A a;

	@Override
	public Object createInstance(Type type) {
		if (type.equals(A.class))
			return a = new A();
		else if (type.equals(A.B.class))
			return a.new B();
		else
			return null;
	}
}

[remyvrs]

my hack was this :

GsonBuilder gsonBuilder = new GsonBuilder(); final A a = new A(); gsonBuilder.registerTypeAdapter(A.class, (InstanceCreator) type -> a); gsonBuilder.registerTypeAdapter(A.B.class, (InstanceCreator<A.B>) type -> a.new B()); gson = gsonBuilder.create();

clearly it works only when having in mind only one A instance …