Dictionary <string,string> map to an object using Automapper

This thread is a bit old, but nowadays there's how to do it on automapper without any configuration, as stated at official documentation:

AutoMapper can map to/from dynamic objects without any explicit configuration (...) Similarly you can map straight from Dictionary to objects, AutoMapper will line up the keys with property names.

Update:

The following code shows a working sample (with unit tests).

void Test()
{
    var mapper = new MapperConfiguration(cfg => { }).CreateMapper();
    var dictionary = new Dictionary<string, object>()
    {
        { "Id", 1 },
        { "Description", "test" }
    };

    var product = mapper.Map<Product>(dictionary);

    Assert.IsNotNull(product);
    Assert.AreEqual(product.Id, 1);
    Assert.AreEqual(product.Description, "test");
}

class Product
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }
}

AutoMapper maps between properties of objects and is not supposed to operate in such scenarios. In this case you need Reflection magic. You could cheat by an intermediate serialization:

var data = new Dictionary<string, string>();
data.Add("Name", "Rusi");
data.Add("Age", "23");
var serializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();
var user = serializer.Deserialize<User>(serializer.Serialize(data));

And if you insist on using AutoMapper you could for example do something along the lines of:

Mapper
    .CreateMap<Dictionary<string, string>, User>()
    .ConvertUsing(x =>
    {
        var serializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();
        return serializer.Deserialize<User>(serializer.Serialize(x));
    });

and then:

var data = new Dictionary<string, string>();
data.Add("Name", "Rusi");
data.Add("Age", "23");
var user = Mapper.Map<Dictionary<string, string>, User>(data);

If you need to handle more complex object hierarchies with sub-objects you must ask yourself the following question: Is Dictionary<string, string> the correct data structure to use in this case?

With the current version of AutoMapper:

public class MyConfig
{
    public string Foo { get; set; }
    public int Bar { get; set; }
}
var config = new MapperConfiguration(cfg => {});
var mapper = config.CreateMapper();

var source = new Dictionary<string, object>
{
    ["Foo"] = "Hello",
    ["Bar"] = 123
};
var obj = mapper.Map<MyConfig>(source);
obj.Foo == "Hello"; // true