Recursively print an objects details

Question

How do I print the content of an object recursively?

Answer 1

You can print it recursively by overriding toString in all your classes.

If you want to have a method like printObjectRecursively(Object o) you need to dive into reflection, fetch the fields, print their name and content recursively using printObjectRecursively(someField).

Example:

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        A a = new A();
        System.out.println(a);
    }
}

class A {
    int i = 5;
    B obj = new B();
    String str = "hello";
    public String toString() {
        return String.format("A: [i: %d, obj: %s, str: %s]", i, obj, str);
    }
}

class B {
    int j = 17;
    public String toString() {
        return String.format("B: [j: %d]", j);
    }
}

Prints:

A: [i: 5, obj: B: [j: 17], str: hello]

A reflection-based recursive print method could be written something like this

private static final List LEAVES = Arrays.asList(
        Boolean.class, Character.class, Byte.class, Short.class,
        Integer.class, Long.class, Float.class, Double.class, Void.class,
        String.class);

public static String toStringRecursive(Object o) throws Exception {

    if (o == null)
        return "null";

    if (LEAVES.contains(o.getClass()))
        return o.toString();

    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    sb.append(o.getClass().getSimpleName()).append(": [");
    for (Field f : o.getClass().getDeclaredFields()) {
        if (Modifier.isStatic(f.getModifiers()))
            continue;
        f.setAccessible(true);
        sb.append(f.getName()).append(": ");
        sb.append(toStringRecursive(f.get(o))).append(" ");
    }
    sb.append("]");
    return sb.toString();
}

Answer 2

You can use:

ToStringBuilder.reflectionToString(this);

Apache Common Lang contains ToStringBuilder class. You can define different style with ToStringStyle object.

Answer 3

I've had great success doing this on a casual basis using XStream to dump JSON representations of objects. It recurses down objects and just seems to do what you want it to do most of the time. And it's super lightweight. Example:

private static final XStream jsonXStream = 
    new XStream(new JsonHierarchicalStreamDriver());

public static String toDebugString(Object object) {
    return jsonXStream.toXML(object);  
    // ignore "toXML" name, it's going to be JSON.
}