Sorting an ArrayList of objects using a custom sorting order

Question

Here's a tutorial about ordering objects:

• The Java Tutorials - Collections - Object Ordering

Although I will give some examples, I would recommend to read it anyway.

---

There are various way to sort an ArrayList. If you want to define a natural (default) ordering, then you need to let Contact implement Comparable. Assuming that you want to sort by default on name, then do (nullchecks omitted for simplicity):

public class Contact implements Comparable<Contact> {

    private String name;
    private String phone;
    private Address address;

    @Override
    public int compareTo(Contact other) {
        return name.compareTo(other.name);
    }

    // Add/generate getters/setters and other boilerplate.
}

so that you can just do

List<Contact> contacts = new ArrayList<Contact>();
// Fill it.

Collections.sort(contacts);

---

If you want to define an external controllable ordering (which overrides the natural ordering), then you need to create a Comparator:

List<Contact> contacts = new ArrayList<Contact>();
// Fill it.

// Now sort by address instead of name (default).
Collections.sort(contacts, new Comparator<Contact>() {
    public int compare(Contact one, Contact other) {
        return one.getAddress().compareTo(other.getAddress());
    }
}); 

---

You can even define the Comparators in the Contact itself so that you can reuse them instead of recreating them everytime:

public class Contact {

    private String name;
    private String phone;
    private Address address;

    // ...

    public static Comparator<Contact> COMPARE_BY_PHONE = new Comparator<Contact>() {
        public int compare(Contact one, Contact other) {
            return one.phone.compareTo(other.phone);
        }
    };

    public static Comparator<Contact> COMPARE_BY_ADDRESS = new Comparator<Contact>() {
        public int compare(Contact one, Contact other) {
            return one.address.compareTo(other.address);
        }
    };

}

which can be used as follows:

List<Contact> contacts = new ArrayList<Contact>();
// Fill it.

// Sort by address.
Collections.sort(contacts, Contact.COMPARE_BY_ADDRESS);

// Sort later by phone.
Collections.sort(contacts, Contact.COMPARE_BY_PHONE);

---

And to cream the top off, you could consider to use a generic javabean comparator:

public class BeanComparator implements Comparator<Object> {

    private String getter;

    public BeanComparator(String field) {
        this.getter = "get" + field.substring(0, 1).toUpperCase() + field.substring(1);
    }

    public int compare(Object o1, Object o2) {
        try {
            if (o1 != null && o2 != null) {
                o1 = o1.getClass().getMethod(getter, new Class[0]).invoke(o1, new Object[0]);
                o2 = o2.getClass().getMethod(getter, new Class[0]).invoke(o2, new Object[0]);
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            // If this exception occurs, then it is usually a fault of the developer.
            throw new RuntimeException("Cannot compare " + o1 + " with " + o2 + " on " + getter, e);
        }

        return (o1 == null) ? -1 : ((o2 == null) ? 1 : ((Comparable<Object>) o1).compareTo(o2));
    }

}

which you can use as follows:

// Sort on "phone" field of the Contact bean.
Collections.sort(contacts, new BeanComparator("phone"));

(as you see in the code, possibly null fields are already covered to avoid NPE's during sort)

In addition to what was already posted you should know that since Java 8 we can shorten our code and write it like:

Collection.sort(yourList, Comparator.comparing(YourClass::getFieldToSortOn));

or since List now have sort method

yourList.sort(Comparator.comparing(YourClass::getFieldToSortOn));

Explanation:

Since Java 8, functional interfaces (interfaces with only one abstract method - they can have more default or static methods) can be easily implemented using:

• lambdas arguments -> body
• or method references source::method.

Since Comparator<T> has only one abstract method int compare(T o1, T o2) it is functional interface.

So instead of (example from @BalusC answer)

Collections.sort(contacts, new Comparator<Contact>() {
    public int compare(Contact one, Contact other) {
        return one.getAddress().compareTo(other.getAddress());
    }
}); 

we can reduce this code to:

Collections.sort(contacts, (Contact one, Contact other) -> {
     return one.getAddress().compareTo(other.getAddress());
});

We can simplify this (or any) lambda by skipping

• argument types (Java will infer them based on method signature)
• or {return ... }

So instead of

(Contact one, Contact other) -> {
     return one.getAddress().compareTo(other.getAddress();
}

we can write

(one, other) -> one.getAddress().compareTo(other.getAddress())

Also now Comparator has static methods like comparing(FunctionToComparableValue) or comparing(FunctionToValue, ValueComparator) which we could use to easily create Comparators which should compare some specific values from objects.

In other words we can rewrite above code as

Collections.sort(contacts, Comparator.comparing(Contact::getAddress)); 
//assuming that Address implements Comparable (provides default order).

This page tells you all you need to know about sorting collections, such as ArrayList.

Basically you need to

• make your Contact class implement the Comparable interface by
  • creating a method public int compareTo(Contact anotherContact) within it.
• Once you do this, you can just call Collections.sort(myContactList);,
  • where myContactList is ArrayList<Contact> (or any other collection of Contact).

There's another way as well, involving creating a Comparator class, and you can read about that from the linked page as well.

Example:

public class Contact implements Comparable<Contact> {

    ....

    //return -1 for less than, 0 for equals, and 1 for more than
    public compareTo(Contact anotherContact) {
        int result = 0;
        result = getName().compareTo(anotherContact.getName());
        if (result != 0)
        {
            return result;
        }
        result = getNunmber().compareTo(anotherContact.getNumber());
        if (result != 0)
        {
            return result;
        }
        ...
    }
}

BalusC and bguiz have already given very complete answers on how to use Java's built-in Comparators.

I just want to add that google-collections has an Ordering class which is more "powerful" than the standard Comparators. It might be worth checking out. You can do cool things such as compounding Orderings, reversing them, ordering depending on a function's result for your objects...

Here is a blog post that mentions some of its benefits.

You need make your Contact classes implement Comparable, and then implement the compareTo(Contact) method. That way, the Collections.sort will be able to sort them for you. Per the page I linked to, compareTo 'returns a negative integer, zero, or a positive integer as this object is less than, equal to, or greater than the specified object.'

For example, if you wanted to sort by name (A to Z), your class would look like this:

public class Contact implements Comparable<Contact> {

    private String name;

    // all the other attributes and methods

    public compareTo(Contact other) {
        return this.name.compareTo(other.name);
    }
}