Java – Learn about generic methods in Java

I’m trying to understand one of the methods I’m reading in an existing Android app. The declaration of the method is as follows:

protected <V, T extends Result> void postObject(final V input, final T result, final ConnectionTarget endpoint, final boolean restart, final int id, final LoaderProvider provider, final ServiceCallbacks<T> callbacks) {

I

just read about generics, so I more or less understand what’s going on here, but not completely. So I have two questions:

1. Should input be a type (i.e. class), or should it just be an object of any type?
2. What does <V, T extend Result> mean? As far as I know, that place should always describe the return type of the method, but it already says void after it, plus, it means both V and T

Can anyone give an example of how to call this method?

I’ll break it into smaller parts so it’s easier to understand.
In the section:

protected <V, T extends Result> void

<V, T extends Result> is an optional (usually nonexistent) section that specifies a generic type (or an unknown object type). This is specified by < and >, and any comma-separated values are a separate object (object “T” must extend the result).

This means later in the method call:

... postObject(final V input,...

The input is object type V, which means it can be any object you want.

Edit

A basic example of calling this method is:

//Now post it
postObject("my input object", null /*Your result class*/, null /*your endpoint*/, true, 0, null /*your loaderProvider*/, null /*your callbacks*/);