RealmList<Integer / String / ...>

[an-k]

Dear realm-Team,

I'm really impressed by Realm and I do like the way you're providing support and solutions on github, SO and gGroups! I like working with Realm - however there are three really big drawbacks for me:

1. No model-instantiation by = new ... - I know you're on it. I can't wait for this! Do we have to wait for the "whole" JSON-Upgrade or will there be an earlier release providing this feature?

2. No model-passing across threads. That's hindering all the great benefits of EventBus and Android Priority Job Queue. But I read that it will be possible in the further versions and I'm looking forward on this.

3. The reason for this issue:
   In my model class I'm allowed to have primitive fields as well as object fields of objects that extend RealmObject.
   But I'm not allowed to have a field type like RealmList<Integer> or RealmList<String>.
   However it is possible to work around this by

RealmList<RealmString> names;

and

public class RealmString extends RealmObject {
private String name;
// getter & setter

It works but it's really ugly and should be unnecessary in my opinion.
Is there any improvement planned regarding this?

Thanks again for your great work - I'm glad Realm helps me developing my app!

---

Related PRs:

• API design (RFC: Primitive List API #4165)
• Implementation (Support Primitive List feature #5031)

[codezion]

I had bit of worries about the Realm design but after using it a lot i have seen it is done just right. My primary use of Realm is to pass data between threads (background processing and UI) and it works perfectly. It is so fast that even AsyncTasks are not needed anymore. Great work. Just few bugs left but easy to work around while waiting for the completion. I hope the next release comes out soon.

[kneth]

@an-k I think that your suggestion (RealmList<String> etc.) is a good one. The complexity of implementing it is "less than impossible" but "greater than trivial". In particular the querying these lists of primitive types could be a bit tricky.

To make a long story short, I can give you a time frame in which it will be implemented.

[an-k]

@kneth Thanks for your reply! You can give a time frame? That's great, so when will that probably be?

[kneth]

@an-k Sorry for being unclear (I forgot a "not"); we don't have any time frame as we haven't decided if we wish to support it.

[Hazer]

@kneth This issue is the major reason for not using it in production yet, I can't change my JSON input, so to use it, I would have to do some really ugly tricks.
And with issues #489 and now #682 rising, I think it should be considered worth supporting.

For my use cases, if it got serialized as a string in the database and back as List, without any type of in db querying (no need to limit, search, just retrieve all), would be perfect.

I think that should be added some kind of RealmPrimitive class or an @ElementCollection annotation like the JPA 2 has.

[jenzz]

Can I ask what the current state and/or priority of this feature request is?
Or: What is the recommended workaround for now?

[mpost]

I agree that this is a worthwhile feature. +1.

Yes, please

[kboyarshinov]

+1

[kaushikmukunda]

Would help solve issues like http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28733024/gson-deserialization-of-liststring-into-realmlistrealmstring
+1