Java JSON serialization - best practice

Question

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 JSONException //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?

Answer 1

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.