Sorting a collection in a generic method in Java 8

Question

The following method performs ordering.

public List<Comparator<Entity>> sort(Map<String, String> map) {
    List<Comparator<Entity>> list = new ArrayList<Comparator<Entity>>();

    for (Map.Entry<String, String> entry : map.entrySet()) {
        boolean sortOrder = entry.getValue().equalsIgnoreCase("asc");

        switch (entry.getKey()) {
            case "id":
                list.add(sortOrder ? Comparator.comparing(Entity::getId) : Comparator.comparing(Entity::getId, Comparator.reverseOrder()));
                break;
            case "size":
                list.add(sortOrder ? Comparator.comparing(Entity::getSize) : Comparator.comparing(Entity::getSize, Comparator.reverseOrder()));
                //break;
        }
    }

    return list;
}

The list being returned by the above method is used in the following way.

// map is initialized somewhere based on client's interactions with sorting.
// Based on client's interactions, map may be empty or it may contain one or more ordering fields.

if (MapUtils.isNotEmpty(map)) {  // map = new LinkedHashMap<String, String>();

    List<Comparator<Entity>> comparators = sort(map);
    Comparator<Entity> comparator = comparators.remove(0);

    for (Comparator<Entity> c : comparators) {
        comparator = comparator.thenComparing(c);
    }

    list = list.stream().sorted(comparator).collect(Collectors.toList());
} else {
    // This is the default ordering.
    list = list.stream().sorted(Comparator.comparing(Entity::getId).reversed()).collect(Collectors.toList());
}

Entity contains two fields named id of type Integer and size of type BigDecimal and list is a type of List<Entity>.

Since there are several other classes having the same fields with the same datatypes, I want this method to be generic so that it has to be defined only once like so,

public <T extends Object> List<Comparator<T>> sort(Map<String, String> map, Class<T> clazz) {
    List<Comparator<T>> list = new ArrayList<Comparator<T>>();

    // Sorting logic.

    return list;
}

But doing so, expressions like T::getId will not compile as obvious, since the generic type parameter T evaluates to Object.

Is there a way to code sorting without knowing the actual class type so that this method can be prevented from being repeated everywhere, when it is needed?

Answer 1

A simple way, without having to rely on reflection magic, is to introduce a common interface for all the types having the same fields with the same datatypes as Entity.

Consider the following IdSize interface with the following Entity.

interface IdSize {
    Integer getId();
    BigDecimal getSize();
}

class Entity implements IdSize {

    private Integer id;
    private BigDecimal size;
    @Override
    public Integer getId() {
        return id;
    }
    @Override
    public BigDecimal getSize() {
        return size;
    }

}

Then you can make your method generic like this:

public <T extends IdSize> List<Comparator<T>> sort(Map<String, String> map) {
    List<Comparator<T>> list = new ArrayList<Comparator<T>>();
    for (Map.Entry<String, String> entry : map.entrySet()) {
        boolean sortOrder = entry.getValue().equalsIgnoreCase("asc");
        Comparator<T> comparator = null;
        switch (entry.getKey()) {
            case "id":
                comparator = Comparator.comparing(IdSize::getId);
                break;
            case "size":
                comparator = Comparator.comparing(IdSize::getSize);
                break;
            default: // do something here, throw an exception?
        }
        list.add(sortOrder ? comparator : comparator.reversed());
    }
    return list;
}

(I refactored a little the switch-case statement to remove the duplicated code.). Also, you might want to add a default clause.