Deserialize JSON to ArrayList using Jackson

You can deserialize directly to a list by using the TypeReference wrapper. An example method:

public static <T> T fromJSON(final TypeReference<T> type,
      final String jsonPacket) {
   T data = null;

   try {
      data = new ObjectMapper().readValue(jsonPacket, type);
   } catch (Exception e) {
      // Handle the problem
   }
   return data;
}

And is used thus:

final String json = "";
Set<POJO> properties = fromJSON(new TypeReference<Set<POJO>>() {}, json);

TypeReference Javadoc