1. Overview
In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to convert a boolean value into an int value. First, we’ll look at how Java handles these two primitive data types; then, we’ll explore multiple ways to convert a boolean into an integer.
2. Data Types
In Java, an integer can be represented by the int primitive data type or the Integer wrapper class. The primitive data type is a 32-bit signed integer represented by the Two’s Complement encoding method. The Integer class serves as a wrapper that allows you to perform unsigned integer operations, as well as to treat integer (primitive) values as objects to work with Generics.
On the other hand, boolean values don’t have a specific size in memory, but it defaults to the Operating System and Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Similarly, like all primitive data types in Java, boolean has the Boolean wrapper class that allows boolean values to behave like objects.
We can leverage the primitive value and the wrapper class of both data types (boolean and int) to perform the data conversion. Assuming that the true and false boolean values represent 1 and 0, respectively, we have multiple approaches to make a conversion.
3. Primitive boolean to int
To convert a primitive boolean value into an int, we evaluate the condition of the expression to determine the integer we want to return:
public int booleanPrimitiveToInt(boolean foo) {
int bar = 0;
if (foo) {
bar = 1;
}
return bar;
}
We can simplify this function by using the ternary operator:
public int booleanPrimitiveToIntTernary(boolean foo) {
return (foo) ? 1 : 0;
}
This approach uses primitive data types (boolean and int) to make the conversion. As a result, we obtain 1 when the boolean expression is true. Otherwise, the method returns 0.
4. Wrapper Class
Using the Boolean wrapper class, we have a couple of approaches to do the conversion:
- We can leverage the static methods from the Boolean class.
- We can call the methods directly from the Boolean object.
4.1. Static Methods
The Boolean class has a compare method that we can use as follows:
public static int booleanObjectToInt(boolean foo) {
return Boolean.compare(foo, false);
}
Recall that the static compare method returns 0 if both arguments have the same value. In other words, when foo is false, the comparison will result in 0. Otherwise, the function returns 1 when the first argument is true and the second argument is false.
Similarly, we can use the same static method, changing the second argument to true:
public static int booleanObjectToIntInverse(boolean foo) {
return Boolean.compare(foo, true) + 1;
}
This time, if foo is true, the compare method evaluates two arguments of the same value, which results in 0. However, adding 1 to the result will return the expected integer value from a truthy boolean variable.
4.2. Boolean Class Object
The Boolean class object has functions such as compareTo that we can use:
public static int booleanObjectMethodToInt(Boolean foo) {
return foo.compareTo(false);
}
Using the method booleanObjectMethodToInt, we can convert a boolean value to an integer the same way we did with the static method. Similarly, you can apply the reversed version by changing the argument to true and adding 1 to the result.
5. Apache Commons
Apache Commons is a popular open-source library for Java that provides utility class, such as BooleanUtils. We can add the library as a dependency in Maven as follows:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
<version>3.12.0</version>
</dependency>
Once the library is in our pom.xml file, we can use the BooleanUtils class to convert boolean values to integer:
public static int booleanUtilsToInt(Boolean foo) {
return BooleanUtils.toInteger(foo);
}
Like the example method booleanPrimitiveToIntTernary, internally, the toInteger method performs the same ternary operator to make the conversion.
6. Conclusion
In this tutorial, we’ve learned how to convert a boolean into an integer value. Assuming that true translates to 1 and false translates to 0, we explored different implementations to achieve this conversion.
As always, the complete code samples for this article can be found over on GitHub.
