Is it possible to determine which `KSerializer` of...

# serialization

[benkuly]

Is it possible to determine which KSerializer of a List of KSerializers can be used for an object? Maybe with the descriptor?

[Dominaezzz]

What do you mean? Like if deserialization will be possible?

[Fudge]

Technically you could try to deserialize and catch the exceptions that might occur.
Could you provide more info on your use case?

[benkuly]

I have polymorphic serialization, which is customizable by users of my library. They can put a String, KClass-Type and a KSerializer into a set. On serialization my own KSerializer searches for a matching KClass in this set, uses the users KSerializer to serialize the content and puts a type field into the Json from the String in the set.
This works very good, as long as the user does not use generics. With generics, the search of a matching KClass does not include the generic type (->type erasure).

Therefore it would be cool to use something like the descriptor to find a serializer, which can be used to serialize a given (generic) object.

[Dominaezzz]

That's tricky, how is the deserialiser supposed to know which generic type to use based on the JSON data?

[Dominaezzz]

What does this hierarchy look like? It's probably matrix isn't it 😄 .

[benkuly]

Yeah, Matrix... I decided to not support generic types, because it seems to be to compicated to detect the right serializer^^

[Dominaezzz]

Also, you should use a serialiser module instead of manually using a set. Works better with kotlinx.