CoerceUtil cannot convert String/Long to Date field properly

[xiaoyao1991]

filter[author.creationDate][gt]=1454638927411 will receive an error complaining "InvalidValueException: Invalid value: 1454638927411"

[DennisMcWherter]

This is typically done by adding custom jackson serializers. Does that approach not work here for some reason?

[Koka]

@DeathByTape I'm afraid it's not true - almost everything is converted with CoerceUtil class wich isn't related to Jackson at all and relies to Apache BeanUtils instead to perform conversion. To provide BeanUtils with new converter you have to do some ugly classloading tricks like this:

private void hackElideDateParser() {
    try {
        Class.forName(CoerceUtil.class.getName());
    } catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
        throw new RuntimeException(e.getMessage(), e);
    }
    DateConverter dateConverter = new DateConverter();
    dateConverter.setPatterns(new String[]{
            "yyyy-MM-dd",
            "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss",
            "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSX",
    });
    ConvertUtils.register(dateConverter, Date.class);
    ConvertUtils.register(new Base64Converter(), byte[].class);
}

[clayreimann]

@DeathByTape @Koka We should provide an easy way to customize how we serialize/deserialize data in elide

[xiaoyao1991]

I'm gonna address this with a custom coerce converter like we did in https://github.com/yahoo/elide/blob/master/elide-core/src/main/java/com/yahoo/elide/utils/coerce/converters/ToEnumConverter.java

[DennisMcWherter]

@clayreimann this can be done via the jackson ObjectMapper. I have added a new constructor to make this more obvious: #317

We should also add this to the docs!

NOTE: This is how we serialize/deserialize which could be independent of type coercion within the system.