Apart from the trick solution using reflection, you could also try jackson with one line as follows:

objectMapper.convertValue(o, Map.class);

A test case:

    @Test
    public void testConversion() {
        User user = new User();
        System.out.println(MapHelper.convertObject(user));
    }

    @Data
    static class User {
        String name = "Jack";
        boolean male = true;
    }


// output: you can have the right type normally
// {name=Jack, male=true}

Well, you can achieve that with Jackson, too. (and it seems to be more comfortable since you were considering using jackson).

Use ObjectMapper's convertValue method:

final ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper(); // jackson's objectmapper
final MyPojo pojo = mapper.convertValue(map, MyPojo.class);

No need to convert into JSON string or something else; direct conversion does much faster.

use Jackson

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;

public class Foo {

  {
    ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
    YourObject obj = objectMapper.convertValue(YourMap, YourObject.class);
  }
}

Lots of potential solutions, but let's add just one more. Use Jackson (JSON processing lib) to do "json-less" conversion, like:

ObjectMapper m = new ObjectMapper();
Map<String,Object> props = m.convertValue(myBean, Map.class);
MyBean anotherBean = m.convertValue(props, MyBean.class);

(this blog entry has some more examples)

You can basically convert any compatible types: compatible meaning that if you did convert from type to JSON, and from that JSON to result type, entries would match (if configured properly can also just ignore unrecognized ones).

Works well for cases one would expect, including Maps, Lists, arrays, primitives, bean-like POJOs.