[java] Spring MVC: Complex object as GET @RequestParam

I have a very similar problem. Actually the problem is deeper as I thought. I am using jquery $.post which uses Content-Type:application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8 as default. Unfortunately I based my system on that and when I needed a complex object as a @RequestParam I couldn't just make it happen.

In my case I am trying to send user preferences with something like;

 $.post("/updatePreferences",  
    {id: 'pr', preferences: p}, 
    function (response) {
 ...

On client side the actual raw data sent to the server is;

...
id=pr&preferences%5BuserId%5D=1005012365&preferences%5Baudio%5D=false&preferences%5Btooltip%5D=true&preferences%5Blanguage%5D=en
...

parsed as;

id:pr
preferences[userId]:1005012365
preferences[audio]:false
preferences[tooltip]:true
preferences[language]:en

and the server side is;

@RequestMapping(value = "/updatePreferences")
public
@ResponseBody
Object updatePreferences(@RequestParam("id") String id, @RequestParam("preferences") UserPreferences preferences) {

    ...
        return someService.call(preferences);
    ...
}

I tried @ModelAttribute, added setter/getters, constructors with all possibilities to UserPreferences but no chance as it recognized the sent data as 5 parameters but in fact the mapped method has only 2 parameters. I also tried Biju's solution however what happens is that, spring creates an UserPreferences object with default constructor and doesn't fill in the data.

I solved the problem by sending JSon string of the preferences from the client side and handle it as if it is a String on the server side;

client:

 $.post("/updatePreferences",  
    {id: 'pr', preferences: JSON.stringify(p)}, 
    function (response) {
 ...

server:

@RequestMapping(value = "/updatePreferences")
public
@ResponseBody
Object updatePreferences(@RequestParam("id") String id, @RequestParam("preferences") String preferencesJSon) {


        String ret = null;
        ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
        try {
            UserPreferences userPreferences = mapper.readValue(preferencesJSon, UserPreferences.class);
            return someService.call(userPreferences);
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
}

to brief, I did the conversion manually inside the REST method. In my opinion the reason why spring doesn't recognize the sent data is the content-type.