How to convert to object from a string generated by @ToString lombok annotation?

Question

I have an interesting problem to solve.

Let's consider the following classes ( Person and Telephone ):

Person

@AllArgsConstructor
@Getter
@Setter
@ToString
public class Person {
    private String name;
    private int age;
    private Telephone telephone;
}

Telephone

@AllArgsConstructor
@Getter
@Setter
@ToString
public class Telephone {
    private int codeArea;
    private String number;
}

And suppose that I have a Person object string generated by the lombok annotation @ToString :

Person(name=John, age=30, telephone=Telephone(codeArea=16, number=1111-2222))

How can I convert the string above to the object again? Is there any library that can help me with this process, or do I have to create manually a parser for it?

I know that there are other ways like generating json or serializing as a java object and then converting it back. However, this is not a solution for me now, as I must have to work with the string mentioned above.

Answer 1

Instead, do this in the class.

/**
 * Object as JSON string.
 * @return
 */
public String toString() {
    // Initiate GSON = new GsonBuilder().create();
    return GSON.toJson(this);
}

From Object to String : object.toString().

From String to Object : GSON.fromJson(jsonString, ModelClass);

Answer 2

Finally, I came up with the idea of converting this string into JSON format and then convert it to the object.

So, the string generated by lombok is:

Person(name=John, age=30, telephone=Telephone(codeArea=16, number=1111-2222))

And then it is converted to JSON, by replacing the following characters ( , = and ) with { , : and } respectively, and removing the class names:

{name:John, age:30, telephone:{codeArea=16, number=1111-2222}}

Now it is possible to convert the JSON into an object.

I created a project in Github that does this conversion.