Convert Iterator to List

Question

Better use a library like Guava:

import com.google.common.collect.Lists;

Iterator<Element> myIterator = ... //some iterator
List<Element> myList = Lists.newArrayList(myIterator);

Another Guava example:

ImmutableList.copyOf(myIterator);

or Apache Commons Collections:

import org.apache.commons.collections.IteratorUtils;

Iterator<Element> myIterator = ...//some iterator

List<Element> myList = IteratorUtils.toList(myIterator);       

In Java 8, you can use the new forEachRemaining method that's been added to the Iterator interface:

List<Element> list = new ArrayList<>();
iterator.forEachRemaining(list::add);

You can copy an iterator to a new list like this:

Iterator<String> iter = list.iterator();
List<String> copy = new ArrayList<String>();
while (iter.hasNext())
    copy.add(iter.next());

That's assuming that the list contains strings. There really isn't a faster way to recreate a list from an iterator, you're stuck with traversing it by hand and copying each element to a new list of the appropriate type.

EDIT :

Here's a generic method for copying an iterator to a new list in a type-safe way:

public static <T> List<T> copyIterator(Iterator<T> iter) {
    List<T> copy = new ArrayList<T>();
    while (iter.hasNext())
        copy.add(iter.next());
    return copy;
}

Use it like this:

List<String> list = Arrays.asList("1", "2", "3");
Iterator<String> iter = list.iterator();
List<String> copy = copyIterator(iter);
System.out.println(copy);
> [1, 2, 3]

Note there is a difference between Iterable and Iterator.

If you have an Iterable, then with Java 8 you can use this solution:

Iterable<Element> iterable = createIterable();
List<Element> array = StreamSupport
    .stream(iterable.spliterator(), false)
    .collect(Collectors.toList());

As I know Collectors.toList() creates ArrayList instance.

Actually in my opinion, it also looks good in one line.
For example if you need to return List<Element> from some method:

return StreamSupport.stream(iter.spliterator(), false).collect(Collectors.toList());