Suppose I have a JSON string like this: `[36, {"co...

# serialization

[uhe]

Suppose I have a JSON string like this: [36, {"color": "orange", "sizes": [23, 42, 7]}] (so a mixed JSON array)
where the first entry of the array is always an Int that represents a type of message and the second is an arbitrary map payload.
I, as a library, need to parse the type field to do some things, but I don't care about the payload and would like to deserialize into a type that is provided by my users.
E.g. fun <UserType> parseMessage(json: String): UserType
Can this be done via kotlinx serialization?

[uhe]

Of course I can just use JsonElement everywhere, but that would be cumbersome for my clients to use, because then they would have to map the elements to domain classes themselves.

[uhe]

I could also deserialize into JsonElement, extract the elements that are relevant to my library, serialize the payload again and then deserialize it with a user-provided serializer. But that seems really inefficient.

[uhe]

I'm wondering if it's at all possible to customize the deserialization in a way that combines the best of both worlds.