How to use Jackson to deserialise an array of objects
First create a mapper : import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;// in play 2.3 ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper(); As Array: MyClass[] myObjects = mapper.readValue(json, MyClass[].class); As List: List<MyClass> myObjects = mapper.readValue(jsonInput, new TypeReference<List<MyClass>>(){}); Another way to specify the List type: List<MyClass> myObjects = mapper.readValue(jsonInput, mapper.getTypeFactory().constructCollectionType(List.class, MyClass.class));