JsonArray now can return the List of JsonElement

[ayarullin]

I think it may be very convenient: for example it will be very helpful, if we need to sort this JsonArray with custom comparator (Using Collections.sort())

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[ayarullin]

I signed it!

[googlebot]

CLAs look good, thanks!

[NightlyNexus]

By the way, you can use the Iterator in the existing Gson releases.
That said, it seems like an asList does belong here, since this already implements Iterable.

[NightlyNexus]

how about asList()?

[NightlyNexus]

redundant doc.

[NightlyNexus]

return Collections.unmodifiableList(new ArrayList<>(elements));

[ayarullin]

Hm... Why? The idea of this metod is modify JsonArray by modifying List (for example for sorting).

That said, it seems like an asList does belong here, since this already implements Iterable.

We cannot convert Iterable to List without going over all elements. This is not optimal way.

[NightlyNexus]

ah, i misunderstood the use case.

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CLAs look good, thanks!

[ayarullin]

Hey guys?
I commited fixes, is it ok?

[lyubomyr-shaydariv]

What if JsonArray could implement List<JsonElement> rather than just being an iterable?

[lyubomyr-shaydariv]

By the way, there's 3b7bc45 at the JsonArrayImplementsList branch but it's not merged to master for some reason. I think that it breaks JsonArray.add return type, but in general it also looks like unfinished work. For example, JsonObject might implement Map<String, JsonElement> as well?

[ayarullin]

@lyubomyr-shaydariv
No, this is because is breaks binary compatibility - look #683
By the way, JsonObject has entrySet method which returns the set of elements in the object.
Maybe returning the Map<String, JsonElement> may be redundant.
What do you think @NightlyNexus

[lyubomyr-shaydariv]

@ayarullin Oh, I see. Thanks.

[Marcono1234]

Note that directly exposing the underlying ArrayList allows inserting Java null values which should not be possible (see also #1771). So maybe this pull request should either change the the list implementation of JsonArray.elements (which would always decrease performance), or better have asList() wrap the underlying list in a list which prevents null values.

[Marcono1234]

This has been superseded by #2225. Thank you nonetheless for your effort on this!