Java introspection: object to map

Another way to user JacksonObjectMapper is the convertValue ex:

 ObjectMapper m = new ObjectMapper();
 Map<String,Object> mappedObject = m.convertValue(myObject, new TypeReference<Map<String, String>>() {});

You can use JavaBeans introspection for this. Read up on the java.beans.Introspector class:

public static Map<String, Object> introspect(Object obj) throws Exception {
    Map<String, Object> result = new HashMap<String, Object>();
    BeanInfo info = Introspector.getBeanInfo(obj.getClass());
    for (PropertyDescriptor pd : info.getPropertyDescriptors()) {
        Method reader = pd.getReadMethod();
        if (reader != null)
            result.put(pd.getName(), reader.invoke(obj));
    }
    return result;
}

Big caveat: My code deals with getter methods only; it will not find naked fields. For fields, see highlycaffeinated's answer. :-) (You will probably want to combine the two approaches.)

Use Apache Commons BeanUtils: http://commons.apache.org/beanutils/.

An implementation of Map for JavaBeans which uses introspection to get and put properties in the bean:

Map<Object, Object> introspected = new org.apache.commons.beanutils.BeanMap(object); 

Note: despite the fact the API returns Map<Object, Object> (since 1.9.0), the actual class for keys in the returned map is java.lang.String