Question

I have an Java bean class Person containing 3 variables:

• name (String)
• age (String)
• address (Object).

Address contains 3 variables:

• street
• door_no
• city

I would like to have a utility which should print all variables in Person.

By this I mean it should print Person & also the Address object contained in it.

I could create a hashmap and put the variable names & values using reflection and print key/value UI in JSP but the issue is I have to apply reflection for Address to add variable/value in the hashmap.

Is there a utility available to do this?

Answer 1

You could use ToStringBuilder from Apache Commons.

From documentation:

A typical invocation for this method would look like:

 public String toString() {
   return ToStringBuilder.reflectionToString(this);
 }

More details:

This class enables a good and consistent toString() to be built for
any class or object. This class aims to simplify the process by:

allowing field names handling all types consistently handling nulls
consistently outputting arrays and multi-dimensional arrays enabling
the detail level to be controlled for Objects and Collections handling
class hierarchies To use this class write code as follows:

 public class Person {
   String name;
   int age;
   boolean smoker;

   ...

   public String toString() {
     return new ToStringBuilder(this).
       append("name", name).
       append("age", age).
       append("smoker", smoker).
       toString();
   }
 }

Alternatively, there is a method that uses reflection to determine the
fields to test. Because these fields are usually private, the method,
reflectionToString, uses AccessibleObject.setAccessible to change the
visibility of the fields. This will fail under a security manager,
unless the appropriate permissions are set up correctly. It is also
slower than testing explicitly.
A typical invocation for this method would look like:

 public String toString() {
   return ToStringBuilder.reflectionToString(this);
 }