Iterating over Java collections in Scala

Question

As of Scala 2.8, all you have to do is to import the JavaConversions object, which already declares the appropriate conversions.

import scala.collection.JavaConversions._

This won't work in previous versions though.

Edit: Scala 2.13.0 deprecates scala.collection.JavaConverters, so since 2.13.0 you need to use scala.jdk.CollectionConverters.

Scala 2.12.0 deprecates scala.collection.JavaConversions, so since 2.12.0 one way of doing this would be something like:

import scala.collection.JavaConverters._

// ...

for(k <- javaCollection.asScala) {
    // ...
}

(notice the import, new is JavaConverters, deprecated is JavaConversions)

There is a wrapper class (scala.collection.jcl.MutableIterator.Wrapper). So if you define

implicit def javaIteratorToScalaIterator[A](it : java.util.Iterator[A]) = new Wrapper(it)

then it will act as a sub class of the Scala iterator so you can do foreach.

The correct answer here is to define an implicit conversion from Java's Iterator to some custom type. This type should implement a foreach method which delegates to the underlying Iterator. This will allow you to use a Scala for-loop with any Java Iterator.

For Scala 2.10:

// Feature warning if you don't enable implicit conversions...
import scala.language.implicitConversions
import scala.collection.convert.WrapAsScala.enumerationAsScalaIterator

With Scala 2.10.4+ (and possibly earlier) it is possible to implicitly convert java.util.Iterator[A] to scala.collection.Iterator[A] by importing scala.collection.JavaConversions.asScalaIterator. Here is an example:

object SpreadSheetParser2 extends App {

  import org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.HSSFWorkbook
  import java.io.FileInputStream
  import scala.collection.JavaConversions.asScalaIterator

  val ios = new FileInputStream("data.xls")
  val workbook = new HSSFWorkbook(ios)
  var sheet = workbook.getSheetAt(0)
  val rows = sheet.rowIterator()

  for (row <- rows) {
    val cells = row.cellIterator()
    for (cell <- cells) {
      print(cell + ",")
    }
    println
  }

}