What is the quickest way to serialize a Java object to Map (and parse back) with minimum code writing?

Question

I have a system that entities (from database, represented as Java objects through ORM) will be read by XML-RPC clients, my existing way is to serialize them via a StructSerializer, which in its code, we read properties out from the Java object, including calling another StructSerializer to serialize/parse a property, e.g.

Surrogate parse(Map<String, Object> in) {
  String name = in.get(Surrogate.NAME, String.class);
  ...
}

Map<String, Object> serialize(Surrogate in) {
  out.put(Surrogate.ID, in.getId());
  out.put(Surrogate.USER, userSerializer.serialize(in.getUser()))
}

What I am looking now is to eliminate/automate/minimize writing such code. Also, XML-RPC-compatible is not really the issue.

Thanks a lot.

Edited:

To elaborate further, XML conversion is handled by Apache XML-RPC, all I need is to dump in a Map for it to work on. What I need now is a unified/well-accepted way to convert Java objects to Map.

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:27

3

I refined my search and found: How to convert a Java object (bean) to key-value pairs (and vice versa)?

That suggests BeanUtils as a good solution.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:27

Community

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answered Jul 21 '10 at 14:37

yclian

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is it even legal here. posting question and answer it yourself. That too not a real answer, just a redirection. – Barun Oct 24 '13 at 09:21
@Barun what's a *real* answer? – yclian Jan 26 '14 at 02:42
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@Barun Yes, OP can answer their own question , please visit this link https://stackoverflow.com/help/self-answer – ankshah May 10 '18 at 04:47

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 08 '16 at 08:47

0

I like XStream for this kind of work - http://x-stream.github.io/

All you have to do is annotate your classes and feed them into the XStream serializer/deserializer. You may want to annotate specific fields to tune the output, but you usually don't have to.

edited Sep 08 '16 at 08:47

facundofarias

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answered Jul 21 '10 at 14:18

Freiheit

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Can XStream convert them to Map, rather than XML? – yclian Jul 21 '10 at 14:21

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 21 '10 at 14:20

0

If you don't need to be compatible, there are a number of options: XMLEncoder, XStream, Castor. They all require very little code to write, unless you need something fancy. XMLEncoder is included in the JRE, others are additional libraries.

answered Jul 21 '10 at 14:20

unbeli

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Can XStream/Castor/etc convert them to Map, rather than XML? – yclian Jul 21 '10 at 14:22
No, I don't think they can, sorry. Didn't understand you need a Map from the original question – unbeli Jul 21 '10 at 15:29
I think those URLs are out of date – Adrian Mouat Jul 12 '12 at 15:30

What is the quickest way to serialize a Java object to Map (and parse back) with minimum code writing?

3 Answers3