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How to cast an Object to a HashMap with out getting unchecked cast warning

 
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Good day.

I have the following code



When I compile this I get



What can I add to the statement such that I will not get the uncheck warning ?
 
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@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
 
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Mxolisi Veco wrote:
What can I add to the statement such that I will not get the uncheck warning ?



There's no clean solution, you have to suppress the warning, as David has said.
The reason is that at runtime, you have no information on the type parameters, so no magic will save you. You could improve this somewhat by turning y into HashMap<Integer, String> though, so you'll be type-safe at least from that point on (if y really is that type - it is, in your case, but if it's something you've restored from serialised form, or got from some other piece of code you have no control over, and the Object points to a HashMap where the key and the value are not Integer and String, you'll run into ClassCastExceptions, or, even worse, hard to find bugs - Map.get, containsKey, containsValue take Object as parameter so no cast/typecheck will be performed even at runtime, get will just return null, contains* false).
 
Mxolisi Veco
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I will use @SuppressWarnings("unchecked").

I tried but the warning were still there. So suppressing the warning does the job.

The chance of getting a ClassCastException is zero because I build the part that returns an Object that contains a HashMap<Integer,String>. The problem is I can not return the HashMap<Integer,String> I can return Object though. So I put the HashMap<Integer,String> in the object as a result.

The problem is solved now thanks.
 
David Newton
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Why can't you return the actual object? Seems like you're working around the type "safety" that Java gives you.
 
Mxolisi Veco
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1. I read the object from a remote server, so java.​io.​ObjectInputStream readObject() only returns an Object
2. I need something that can carry a HashMap in the event of a succesful search or an exception in the event of a failure.
The only thing that I know tha can carry any of these is an Object.
 
David Newton
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If you're always getting either an exception or the HashMap, why not just wrap the call and either return an object or throw an app-specific exception?
 
Mxolisi Veco
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I am not sure if i understand what you mean by

wrap the call

.

This is what I do currently

From what I understand, I will still get the results from the server as an Object and I will be forced to cast the results which will generate a warning. So suppressing the warning seems to be the only way to work around this without complicating the source code.
 
David Newton
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So the thing you're returning doesn't need to hold *either* a HashMap *or* an exception, which is what you said originally:

2. I need something that can carry a HashMap in the event of a succesful search or an exception in the event of a failure.


 
Mxolisi Veco
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It does need to hold an Exception or a HashMap.
What is it that I wrote that makes you think it does not?

The server is running on a different machine, if a throw the exception on the server side, then the client will never know that something went wrong. So I return the Exception or the HashMap to the calling client. Then the client checks the results that they contain the HashMap. If the results are not a HashMap, then they are an exception.
 
David Newton
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Mxolisi Veco wrote:What is it that I wrote that makes you think it does not?


Because you said:


2. Check that the result are of type HashMap
    if results are of type HashMap
        cast the results to a HashMap
    otherwise
        throw an exception.


Throwing an exception is not the same as returning an exception. If you're *returning* an exception, you're correct--but that would defeat the purpose of both exceptions, and type safety.

My original suggestion still stands: either return the HashMap, or throw an exception. Keep the signature as a HashMap and keep the code that calls the method substantially cleaner.
 
Mxolisi Veco
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When I read the results from the server, you read it as an object, so I need to cast those results to HashMap. The casting is the problem.
 
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There is no way to get out of this, the only thing you can do to get rid of the warning is by using the @SuppressWarnings annotation.
 
Mxolisi Veco
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Thanks.
Thats what I decided to do.
 
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