Best way of invoking getter by reflection

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I think this should point you towards the right direction:

import java.beans.*

for (PropertyDescriptor pd : Introspector.getBeanInfo(Foo.class).getPropertyDescriptors()) {
  if (pd.getReadMethod() != null && !"class".equals(pd.getName()))
    System.out.println(pd.getReadMethod().invoke(foo));
}

Note that you could create BeanInfo or PropertyDescriptor instances yourself, i.e. without using Introspector. However, Introspector does some caching internally which is normally a Good Thing ™. If you’re happy without a cache, you can even go for

// TODO check for non-existing readMethod
Object value = new PropertyDescriptor("name", Person.class).getReadMethod().invoke(person);

However, there are a lot of libraries that extend and simplify the java.beans API. Commons BeanUtils is a well known example. There, you’d simply do:

Object value = PropertyUtils.getProperty(person, "name");

BeanUtils comes with other handy stuff. i.e. on-the-fly value conversion (object to string, string to object) to simplify setting properties from user input.

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