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Kotlin Conflicting overloads: public open fun statements()

I have an interface Persistable which looks like this, the <T extends Statement<T>> List<Statement<T>> is to allow it to support both BoundedStatements and SimpleStatements in data stax 4.x driver.
public interface Persistable {
<T extends Statement<T>> List<Statement<T>> statements();
}
This java interface is inherited by Kotlin class A such that
data class UpdateRule(
private val something: S) : Persistable {
override fun statements(): List<Statement<BoundStatement> {
return PutKeyValue(Function(orgId, serviceId), JsonUtil.toJson(rule)).statements() //this returns BoundStatement
}
}
However, this gives the error Conflicting overloads.This code seems to work in Java(although with a warning), but in Kotlin it does not allow at all, how can I resolve this while also making sure parent interface remains generic to both Bound and Simple Statement?

You seem to misunderstand what the generics in Persistable mean. As it is written right now, you are supposed to implement the statements method so that it can handle any kind of T that extends Statement<T>. The generics there doesn't mean "implement this by choosing a kind of statement that you like".
It only produces a warning in Java because Java's generics is broken. Because of type erasure, List<Statement<BoundStatement> and List<Statement<T>> both erase to the same type - List, so the method in UpdateRule does implement the method in the interface if you consider the erasures. OTOH, type erasure isn't a thing in Kotlin (at least not in Kotlin/Core).
To fix this, you can move the generic type parameter to the interface:
public interface Persistable<T extends Statement<T>> {
List<Statement<T>> statements();
}
data class UpdateRule(private val something: S) :
Persistable<BoundStatement> {
override fun statements(): List<BoundStatement> =
PutKeyValue(Function(orgId, serviceId), JsonUtil.toJson(rule)).statements()
}
Notice how when we are implementing the interface, we can now specify the specific T that we are implementing for.

In Java just like in Kotin, the value of the type parameter of a generic method is determined by the caller of the method, and can be different at every call of the method, even on the same instance.
In your specific case, with the Java interface declared like this, statements() is supposed to be implemented in such a way that the caller can choose which type of statement will be returned by a given call to this method. This is not the case in your implementation, and that's why Kotlin doesn't allow it. As pointed out by #Sweeper, Java is broken in this respect and might let you get away with a warning.
This is different when using a generic class or interface. If you define the type parameter at the class/interface level, then the value of that type parameter is determined at construction time of the class, or can be fixed by subclasses. For a given instance, all calls to the method will return a well known type, which is (I believe) what you want here.
You can do this in Java:
public interface Persistable<T extends Statement<T>> {
List<Statement<T>> statements();
}
And then in Kotlin:
data class UpdateRule(
private val something: S
) : Persistable<BoundStatement> {
override fun statements(): List<BoundStatement> {
return PutKeyValue(Function(orgId, serviceId), JsonUtil.toJson(rule)).statements() //this returns BoundStatement
}
}

Jackson ObjectMapper only interfaces known

If I want to read some JSON into an object, and I have the interface but must use the Spring context to get the implementation class, I need to use a SimpleAbstractTypeResolver to map the interface to the implementation. So far, so good, if I know in advance what interfaces go to what implementation. But if the interface has methods that return other interfaces--and possibly down the line recursively--and I don't necessarily know in advance, I thought I could use reflection to figure it out. So this is what I came up with, but the compiler does NOT like the line resolver.addMapping(method.getReturnType(), method.getReturnType());, says it's not applicable for these arguments. I'm pretty sure the types are okay for that method--any thoughts on how to make this happen?
for (Method method : clazz.getMethods()) {
if (method.getReturnType().isInterface() && method.getName().startsWith("get")) {
// getter method returns an interface so find its implementation class
Class beanClass = context.getBean(method.getReturnType()).getClass();
if (clazz.isAssignableFrom(beanClass)) {
resolver.addMapping(method.getReturnType(), method.getReturnType());
mapInterfaces(objectMapper, clazz, resolver);
}
}
}

Probably you need to review your types.
My guess is following:
resolver.addMapping(method.getReturnType(), beanClass);
(replace second parameter method.getReturnType() with beanClass)
or as an alternative (the code is not completely clear for me, sorry)
resolver.addMapping(clazz, beanClass);
You should put an Interface and Implementation into addMapping().
Example:
interface ITest{};
class TestImpl implements ITest {}
usage:
resolver.addMapping(ITest.class, TestImpl.class);

Probably you need to review your types.
My guess is following:
new ObjectMapper().writerFor(<Interface>.class).writeValuesAsArray(<Class>);

ObjectMapper using TypeReference not working when passed type in generic method

This is the method:
protected <T> TestPageResult<T> getTestPageResutForRequest(MockHttpServletRequestBuilder request) throws Exception {
String responseJson = mockMvc.perform(request).andReturn().getResponse()
.getContentAsString();
TestPageResult<T> response = getObjectMapper().readValue(responseJson,
new TypeReference<TestPageResult<T>>() {
});
return response;
}
I call it like this:
TestPageResult<SomeDto> pageResult = this.<SomeDto>getTestPageResutForRequest(getRequest());
TestPageResult is:
protected static class TestPageResult<T> {
private List<T> items;
private long totalCount = -1;
public TestPageResult() {
}
//omitted getters and setters
}
The resulting pageResult.getItems() contains a List of LinkedHashMap instead of a list of SomeDto. If I were to just hardcode the SomeDto type in the objectMapper.readValue method I'd get the correct results.
What's the problem?
edit: The suggested duplicated did solve my problem - kind of.
I used:
JavaType type = getObjectMapper().getTypeFactory().constructParametricType(TestPageResult.class, clazz);
TestPageResult<T> response = getObjectMapper().readValue(responseJson, type);
Problem is there is no going around not passing down a Class argument to the method. So the method looks ugly due to both passing a generic type and the same thing as a Class. Obviously you can just not pass the generic now but this way a casting would be required and adding SuppressWarnings and so on.

The problem is erasure. All these <T> parameters don't exist in the compiled code, after they're erased. This means that source new TypeReference<TestPageResult<T>>() looks like new TypeReference<TestPageResult>() once compiled, which is not what you want. (Similar to how a List<String> ends up being a List in compiled code, and it's just compile-time validation that you don't add Integers to your String List.)
I think there's roughly two ways to deal with this (in this case), both of these you already stumbled upon:
Either you create a type that properly represents what you want, such as: new TypeReference<TestPageResult<SomeDto>>(), or class SomeDtoPageResult extends TestPageResult<SomeDto> which you can then use in places like readValue(..., SomeDtoPageResult.class);
Or you create a complete class representation, like you were doing with JavaType
What you really want won't work. Your best bet is to tinker and come up with the cleanest code that solves it. Generics let you express really elaborate structures, and when you serialize an actual instance (nested objects), that comes out just fine, but when the classes need to be introspected at runtime, e.g. for deserialization (your use case) or to build a model (e.g. to generate Swagger docs), this becomes problematic.

When called on a derived class, have a generic method defined in base class return derived class type in Java

I have a utility class for interacting with the Datastore (GAE's in-built Datastore in my case) and it has methods like:
//Class GaeDataUtil
public static <T> Optional<Key<T>> saveEntity(T entity)
(Optional is from the Guava library and Key<T> from Objectify, although I doubt any of this makes a difference.)
I want my (minimal) hierarchy of entities to have a .save() method. So that for:
public class User extends RootEntity
where RootEntity provides:
public Optional<Key<T>> save() {
//Skipping the error-handling.
return GaeDataUtil.saveEntity(this);
}
I can write:
User myUser = new User();
// set some properties
Optional<Key<User>> optKey = myUser.save();
But of course that doesn't work because a call to myUser.save() returns Optional<Key<RootEntity>> not Optional<Key<User>> as I want.
I can avoid this issue by typecasting in User.save() (and Account.save() and Project.save() etc. etc.) and suppressing warnings, but even if there are only (say) 10 entity classes extending RootEntity, that's still a fair bit of boilerplate code to write just to typecast. Also, I think that much of the benefit of having a class hierarchy is lost if I have to write code (however minimal) for every derived class (there will be other, similar methods too).
Is there a better solution to this?
Update: using Java 7.

You will just need to type cast it to the Generic type T in the RootEntity.save() method.
public <T> Optional<Key<T>> save() {
//Skipping the error-handling.
return (Optional<Key<T>> GaeDataUtil.saveEntity(this); // This line will generate a warning.
}
And then when you write,
Optional<Key<User>> optKey = myUser.save();
It will automatically be inferred correctly because of Target Type Inference.

One solution is to parameterize RootEntity something like this:
class RootEntity<Subclass extends RootEntity> {
public Optional<Key<Subclass>> save() {...}
}
Then define your subclass like:
class User extends RootEntity<User> {...}
I've used this pattern before. If there is a slicker solution, I'll be eager to see it. :)

This is what finally worked:
public <T extends RootEntity> Optional<Key<T>> save1() {
#SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
Key<T> key = (Key<T>) ofy().save().entity(this).now();
return Optional.fromNullable(key);
}
Doing this in two steps works (get the Key, then wrap it up in an Optional) --- it let's the Target Type Inference work correctly. Doing it in a single step doesn't:
public <T extends RootEntity> Optional<Key<T>> save2() {
return (Optional<Key<T>>) Optional.fromNullable(ofy().save().entity(this).now());
}
This second form as suggested by #Codebender shows an error (Cannot cast from Optional<Key<RootEntity>> to Optional<Key<T>>), not a warning in Eclipse.
However, the basic idea by #Codebender of using Target Type Inference was sound.

Java generics question - Class<T> vs. T?

I'm using Hibernate validator and trying to create a little util class:
public class DataRecordValidator<T> {
public void validate(Class<T> clazz, T validateMe) {
ClassValidator<T> validator = new ClassValidator<T>(clazz);
InvalidValue[] errors = validator.getInvalidValues(validateMe);
[...]
}
}
Question is, why do I need to supply the Class<T> clazz parameter when executing new ClassValidator<T>(clazz)? Why can't you specify:
T as in ClassValidator<T>(T)?
validateMe.getClass() as in ClassValidator<T>(validateMe.getClass())
I get errors when I try to do both options.
Edit: I understand why #1 doesn't work. But I don't get why #2 doesn't work. I currently get this error with #2:
cannot find symbol
symbol : constructor ClassValidator(java.lang.Class<capture#279 of ? extends java.lang.Object>)
location: class org.hibernate.validator.ClassValidator<T>
Note: Hibernate API method is (here)

Because T is not a value - it's just a hint for the compiler. The JVM has no clue of the T. You can use generics only as a type for the purposes of type checking at compile time.

If the validate method is yours, then you can safely skip the Class atribute.
public void validate(T validateMe) {
ClassValidator<T> validator =
new ClassValidator<T>((Class<T>) validateMe.getClass());
...
}
But the ClassValidator constructor requires a Class argument.
Using an unsafe cast is not preferred, but in this case it is actually safe if you don't have something like this:
class A {..}
class B extends A {..}
new DataRecordValidator<A>.validate(new B());
If you think you will need to do something like that, include the Class argument in the method. Otherwise you may be getting ClassCastException at runtime, but this is easily debuggable, although it's not quite the idea behind generics.

Because ClassValidator is requiring a Class object as its parameter, NOT an instance of the class in question. Bear in mind you might be able to do what you're trying to do with this code:
ClassValidator<? extends T> validator = new ClassValidator<? extends T>(validateMe.getClass());