Java – Powerful Comparison with Lambdas

1. Overview

In this tutorial, we’re going to take a first look at the Lambda support in Java 8, specifically how to leverage it to write the Comparator and sort a Collection.

This article is part of the “Java – Back to Basic” series here on Baeldung.

First, let’s define a simple entity class:

public class Human {
    private String name;
    private int age;

    // standard constructors, getters/setters, equals and hashcode
}

2. Basic Sort Without Lambdas

Before Java 8, sorting a collection would involve creating an anonymous inner class for the Comparator used in the sort:

new Comparator<Human>() {
    @Override
    public int compare(Human h1, Human h2) {
        return h1.getName().compareTo(h2.getName());
    }
}

This would simply be used to sort the List of Human entities:

@Test
public void givenPreLambda_whenSortingEntitiesByName_thenCorrectlySorted() {
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(
      new Human("Sarah", 10), 
      new Human("Jack", 12)
    );
    
    Collections.sort(humans, new Comparator<Human>() {
        @Override
        public int compare(Human h1, Human h2) {
            return h1.getName().compareTo(h2.getName());
        }
    });
    Assert.assertThat(humans.get(0), equalTo(new Human("Jack", 12)));
}

3. Basic Sort With Lambda Support

With the introduction of Lambdas, we can now bypass the anonymous inner class and achieve the same result with simple, functional semantics:

(final Human h1, final Human h2) -> h1.getName().compareTo(h2.getName());

Similarly, we can now test the behavior just as before:

@Test
public void whenSortingEntitiesByName_thenCorrectlySorted() {
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(
      new Human("Sarah", 10), 
      new Human("Jack", 12)
    );
    
    humans.sort(
      (Human h1, Human h2) -> h1.getName().compareTo(h2.getName()));
 
    assertThat(humans.get(0), equalTo(new Human("Jack", 12)));
}

Notice that we’re also using the new sort API added to java.util.List in Java 8 instead of the old Collections.sort API.

4. Basic Sorting With No Type Definitions

We can further simplify the expression by not specifying the type definitions; the compiler is capable of inferring these on its own:

(h1, h2) -> h1.getName().compareTo(h2.getName())

Again, the test remains very similar:

@Test
public void 
  givenLambdaShortForm_whenSortingEntitiesByName_thenCorrectlySorted() {
    
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(
      new Human("Sarah", 10), 
      new Human("Jack", 12)
    );
    
    humans.sort((h1, h2) -> h1.getName().compareTo(h2.getName()));
 
    assertThat(humans.get(0), equalTo(new Human("Jack", 12)));
}

5. Sort Using Reference to Static Method

Next we’re going to perform the sort using a Lambda Expression with a reference to a static method.

First, we’re going to define the method compareByNameThenAge with the exact same signature as the compare method in a Comparator<Human> object:

public static int compareByNameThenAge(Human lhs, Human rhs) {
    if (lhs.name.equals(rhs.name)) {
        return Integer.compare(lhs.age, rhs.age);
    } else {
        return lhs.name.compareTo(rhs.name);
    }
}

Then we’re going to call the humans.sort method with this reference:

humans.sort(Human::compareByNameThenAge);

The end result is a working sorting of the collection using the static method as a Comparator:

@Test
public void 
  givenMethodDefinition_whenSortingEntitiesByNameThenAge_thenCorrectlySorted() {
    
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(
      new Human("Sarah", 10), 
      new Human("Jack", 12)
    );
    
    humans.sort(Human::compareByNameThenAge);
    Assert.assertThat(humans.get(0), equalTo(new Human("Jack", 12)));
}

6. Sort Extracted Comparators

We can also avoid defining even the comparison logic itself by using an instance method reference and the Comparator.comparing method, which extracts and creates a Comparator based on that function.

We’re going to use the getter getName() to build the Lambda expression and sort the list by name:

@Test
public void 
  givenInstanceMethod_whenSortingEntitiesByName_thenCorrectlySorted() {
    
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(
      new Human("Sarah", 10), 
      new Human("Jack", 12)
    );
    
    Collections.sort(
      humans, Comparator.comparing(Human::getName));
    assertThat(humans.get(0), equalTo(new Human("Jack", 12)));
}

7. Reverse Sort

JDK 8 has also introduced a helper method for reversing the comparator. We can make quick use of that to reverse our sort:

@Test
public void whenSortingEntitiesByNameReversed_thenCorrectlySorted() {
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(
      new Human("Sarah", 10), 
      new Human("Jack", 12)
    );
    
    Comparator<Human> comparator
      = (h1, h2) -> h1.getName().compareTo(h2.getName());
    
    humans.sort(comparator.reversed());
 
    Assert.assertThat(humans.get(0), equalTo(new Human("Sarah", 10)));
}

8. Sort With Multiple Conditions

The comparison lambda expressions need not be this simple. We can write more complex expressions as well, for example sorting the entities first by name, and then by age:

@Test
public void whenSortingEntitiesByNameThenAge_thenCorrectlySorted() {
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(
      new Human("Sarah", 12), 
      new Human("Sarah", 10), 
      new Human("Zack", 12)
    );
    
    humans.sort((lhs, rhs) -> {
        if (lhs.getName().equals(rhs.getName())) {
            return Integer.compare(lhs.getAge(), rhs.getAge());
        } else {
            return lhs.getName().compareTo(rhs.getName());
        }
    });
    Assert.assertThat(humans.get(0), equalTo(new Human("Sarah", 10)));
}

9. Sort With Multiple Conditions – Composition

The same comparison logic, first sorting by name and then by age, can also be implemented by the new composition support for Comparator.

Starting with JDK 8, we can now chain together multiple comparators to build more complex comparison logic:

@Test
public void 
  givenComposition_whenSortingEntitiesByNameThenAge_thenCorrectlySorted() {
    
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(
      new Human("Sarah", 12), 
      new Human("Sarah", 10), 
      new Human("Zack", 12)
    );

    humans.sort(
      Comparator.comparing(Human::getName).thenComparing(Human::getAge)
    );
    
    Assert.assertThat(humans.get(0), equalTo(new Human("Sarah", 10)));
}

10. Sorting a List With Stream.sorted()

We can also sort a collection using Java 8’s Stream sorted() API. 

We can sort the stream using natural ordering, as well as ordering provided by a Comparator. For this, we have two overloaded variants of the sorted() API:

• sorted() – sorts the elements of a Stream using natural ordering; the element class must implement the Comparable interface.
• sorted(Comparator<? super T> comparator) – sorts the elements based on a Comparator instance

Let’s look at an example of how to use the sorted() method with natural ordering:

@Test
public final void 
  givenStreamNaturalOrdering_whenSortingEntitiesByName_thenCorrectlySorted() {
    List<String> letters = Lists.newArrayList("B", "A", "C");
	
    List<String> sortedLetters = letters.stream().sorted().collect(Collectors.toList());
    assertThat(sortedLetters.get(0), equalTo("A"));
}

Now let’s see how we can use a custom Comparator with the sorted() API:

@Test
public final void 
  givenStreamCustomOrdering_whenSortingEntitiesByName_thenCorrectlySorted() {	
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(new Human("Sarah", 10), new Human("Jack", 12));
    Comparator<Human> nameComparator = (h1, h2) -> h1.getName().compareTo(h2.getName());
	
    List<Human> sortedHumans = 
      humans.stream().sorted(nameComparator).collect(Collectors.toList());
    assertThat(sortedHumans.get(0), equalTo(new Human("Jack", 12)));
}

We can simplify the above example even further if we use the Comparator.comparing() method:

@Test
public final void 
  givenStreamComparatorOrdering_whenSortingEntitiesByName_thenCorrectlySorted() {
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(new Human("Sarah", 10), new Human("Jack", 12));
 
    List<Human> sortedHumans = humans.stream()
      .sorted(Comparator.comparing(Human::getName))
      .collect(Collectors.toList());
      
    assertThat(sortedHumans.get(0), equalTo(new Human("Jack", 12)));
}

11. Sorting a List in Reverse With Stream.sorted()

We can also use Stream.sorted() to sort a collection in reverse.

First, let’s see an example of how to combine the sorted() method with Comparator.reverseOrder() to sort a list in the reverse natural order:

@Test
public final void 
  givenStreamNaturalOrdering_whenSortingEntitiesByNameReversed_thenCorrectlySorted() {
    List<String> letters = Lists.newArrayList("B", "A", "C");

    List<String> reverseSortedLetters = letters.stream()
      .sorted(Comparator.reverseOrder())
      .collect(Collectors.toList());
      
    assertThat(reverseSortedLetters.get(0), equalTo("C"));
}

Now let’s see how we can use the sorted() method and a custom Comparator:

@Test
public final void 
  givenStreamCustomOrdering_whenSortingEntitiesByNameReversed_thenCorrectlySorted() {
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(new Human("Sarah", 10), new Human("Jack", 12));
    Comparator<Human> reverseNameComparator = 
      (h1, h2) -> h2.getName().compareTo(h1.getName());

    List<Human> reverseSortedHumans = humans.stream().sorted(reverseNameComparator)
      .collect(Collectors.toList());
    assertThat(reverseSortedHumans.get(0), equalTo(new Human("Sarah", 10)));
}

Note that the invocation of compareTo is flipped, which is responsible for the reversing.

Finally, let’s simplify the above example by using the Comparator.comparing() method:

@Test
public final void 
  givenStreamComparatorOrdering_whenSortingEntitiesByNameReversed_thenCorrectlySorted() {
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(new Human("Sarah", 10), new Human("Jack", 12));

    List<Human> reverseSortedHumans = humans.stream()
      .sorted(Comparator.comparing(Human::getName, Comparator.reverseOrder()))
      .collect(Collectors.toList());
    
    assertThat(reverseSortedHumans.get(0), equalTo(new Human("Sarah", 10)));
}

12. Null Values

So far, we implemented our Comparators in a way that they can’t sort collections containing null values. That is, if the collection contains at least one null element, then the sort method throws a NullPointerException:

@Test(expected = NullPointerException.class)
public void givenANullElement_whenSortingEntitiesByName_thenThrowsNPE() {
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(null, new Human("Jack", 12));

    humans.sort((h1, h2) -> h1.getName().compareTo(h2.getName()));
}

The simplest solution is to handle the null values manually in our Comparator implementation:

@Test
public void givenANullElement_whenSortingEntitiesByNameManually_thenMovesTheNullToLast() {
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(null, new Human("Jack", 12), null);

    humans.sort((h1, h2) -> {
        if (h1 == null) {
            return h2 == null ? 0 : 1;
        }
        else if (h2 == null) {
            return -1;
        }
        return h1.getName().compareTo(h2.getName());
    });

    Assert.assertNotNull(humans.get(0));
    Assert.assertNull(humans.get(1));
    Assert.assertNull(humans.get(2));
}

Here we’re pushing all null elements towards the end of the collection. To do that, the comparator considers null to be greater than non-null values. When both are null, they are considered equal.

Additionally, we can pass any Comparator that is not null-safe into the Comparator.nullsLast() method and achieve the same result:

@Test
public void givenANullElement_whenSortingEntitiesByName_thenMovesTheNullToLast() {
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(null, new Human("Jack", 12), null);

    humans.sort(Comparator.nullsLast(Comparator.comparing(Human::getName)));

    Assert.assertNotNull(humans.get(0));
    Assert.assertNull(humans.get(1));
    Assert.assertNull(humans.get(2));
}

Similarly, we can use Comparator.nullsFirst() to move the null elements towards the start of the collection:

@Test
public void givenANullElement_whenSortingEntitiesByName_thenMovesTheNullToStart() {
    List<Human> humans = Lists.newArrayList(null, new Human("Jack", 12), null);

    humans.sort(Comparator.nullsFirst(Comparator.comparing(Human::getName)));

    Assert.assertNull(humans.get(0));
    Assert.assertNull(humans.get(1));
    Assert.assertNotNull(humans.get(2));
}

It’s highly recommended to use the nullsFirst() or nullsLast() decorators, as they’re more flexible and readable.

13. Conclusion

This article illustrated the various and exciting ways that a List can be sorted using Java 8 Lambda Expressions, moving right past syntactic sugar and into real and powerful functional semantics.