Could you please be more specific?  Do you need to reconstruct the
objects from the string later?b

do you want a generalised toString()?

Try a generic toString() :

http://www.rgagnon.com/javadetails/java-0432.html

Bye.

I think you can use the reflection api for this, in a relatively
straightforward manner.

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/reflect/TOC.html

--Joe

If you don't mind reading XML, you can use XStream.

Just want to make sure that you know that you can override toString()
to do exactly what you need.  If that is not what you need, you can
take a look at a MBean implementation and use jconsole
(http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2SE/jconsole.html) or
some other tool to get the info that you need.

 I just have finished a quick hack. The usage can be seen from
 the following example.

class Ship { Position position; } class Position { int x; int y; }

public class Main
{
 public static void main( final java.lang.String[] args )
 {
   Position position = new Position(); position.x = 1; position.y = 2;
   Ship ship = new Ship(); ship.position = position;

   java.lang.System.out.println
   ( new de.dclj.ram.notation.junobjects.Junobjects().dump( ship )); }}

 The output is:

< &objectmap
 object=
 < &Ship
   position=
   < &Position zz0 >>
 zz0=
 < &Position
   x=
   < &int 1 >
   y=
   < &int 2 >>>

 It needs the following jar file:

http://www.purl.org/stefan_ram/jar/ram.jar

 This jar is released under the GPL. This is software in pre-alpha
 state. Distribution with source and documentation is not yet
 finished, but it is allowed to decompile the jar.