HashMap to return default value for non-found keys?

Question

In Java 8, use Map.getOrDefault. It takes the key, and the value to return if no matching key is found.

[Update]

As noted by other answers and commenters, as of Java 8 you can simply call Map#getOrDefault(...).

[Original]

There's no Map implementation that does this exactly but it would be trivial to implement your own by extending HashMap:

public class DefaultHashMap<K,V> extends HashMap<K,V> {
  protected V defaultValue;
  public DefaultHashMap(V defaultValue) {
    this.defaultValue = defaultValue;
  }
  @Override
  public V get(Object k) {
    return containsKey(k) ? super.get(k) : defaultValue;
  }
}

Use Commons' DefaultedMap if you don't feel like reinventing the wheel, e.g.,

Map<String, String> map = new DefaultedMap<>("[NO ENTRY FOUND]");
String surname = map.get("Surname"); 
// surname == "[NO ENTRY FOUND]"

You can also pass in an existing map if you're not in charge of creating the map in the first place.

Java 8 introduced a nice computeIfAbsent default method to Map interface which stores lazy-computed value and so doesn't break map contract:

Map<Key, Graph> map = new HashMap<>();
map.computeIfAbsent(aKey, key -> createExpensiveGraph(key));

Origin: http://blog.javabien.net/2014/02/20/loadingcache-in-java-8-without-guava/

Disclamer: This answer doesn't match exactly what OP asked but may be handy in some cases matching question's title when keys number is limited and caching of different values would be profitable. It shouldn't be used in opposite case with plenty of keys and same default value as this would needlessly waste memory.

Can't you just create a static method that does exactly this?

private static <K, V> V getOrDefault(Map<K,V> map, K key, V defaultValue) {
    return map.containsKey(key) ? map.get(key) : defaultValue;
}

You can simply create a new class that inherits HashMap and add getDefault method. Here is a sample code:

public class DefaultHashMap<K,V> extends HashMap<K,V> {
    public V getDefault(K key, V defaultValue) {
        if (containsKey(key)) {
            return get(key);
        }

        return defaultValue;
    }
}

I think that you should not override get(K key) method in your implementation, because of the reasons specified by Ed Staub in his comment and because you will break the contract of Map interface (this can potentially lead to some hard-to-find bugs).