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Stream - filter based on hashMap value

I want to start from a collection of diploma projects and by using stream I want to get an arrayList of diploma project titles, from the students that have taken a course identified by courseId. They will also need to have passed the course with grade of 2 or higher.
I have this DiplomaProject class:
public class DiplomaProject{
String title;
ArrayList<Student> authors
}
Each diplomaProject can have multiple authors.
I have this Course class:
public class Course{
String courseName;
String courseId;
}
This Student class:
public class Student{
String name;
HashMap<Course, Integer> courseList;
DiplomaProject diplomaProject;
}
The grade of the course is the Integer value of courseList.
This is my current solution, but I know it does not do what I want. I can't find a way to filter based on the value of the courseList, and I do not know how I can get the the diplomaProject titles at the end of the streams (only at the top level).
public static List<String> diplomaProjectTitle(List<DiplomaProject> diplomaProjects) {
return diplomaProjects.stream()
.map(diplomaProject -> diplomaProject.authors)
.flatMap(students -> students.stream())
.filter(student -> student.courseList.keySet().equals("math1001"))
.flatMap(student -> student.courseList.keySet().stream())
.map(student -> student.courseName)
.collect(Collectors.toList());

You are losing the info on the diploma projects with the the .map functions. What you want to do is operate within the .filter() functions of the first diplomaproj stream.
Therefore
public List<String> diplomaProjectTitles(List<DiplomaProject> diplomaProjects) {
return diplomaProjects.stream()
.filter(projects -> projects.getAuthors().stream().map(Student::getCourseList)
//get the course matching this one (both name and id)
.map(c -> c.get(new Course("math101", "1")))
//check if that course has grade greater than the minimum
.anyMatch(grade -> grade>=2))
.map(DiplomaProject::getTitle)
.collect(Collectors.toList());
}
For this to work though you would need to modify your Course class. Since you are using it within a hash map as a key, and want to get it through a custom query you will need to add the hashCode() function.
public class Course {
private String courseName;
private String courseId;
#Override
public int hashCode() {
return courseName.hashCode() + courseId.hashCode();
}
#Override
public boolean equals(Object o) {
if(o instanceof Course oc) {
return oc.getCourseName().equals(this.getCourseName()) && oc.getCourseId().equals(this.getCourseId());
}
return false;
}
//getters and setters
}
In order to test it I created a simple method that prepares a test case
public void filterStudents() {
List<DiplomaProject> diplomaProjects = new ArrayList<>();
List<Course> courses = new ArrayList<>();
courses.add(new Course("math101", "1"));
courses.add(new Course("calc101", "2"));
courses.add(new Course("calc102", "3"));
List<Student> students = new ArrayList<>();
Map<Course, Integer> courseMap = Map.of(courses.get(0), 3, courses.get(1), 1);
students.add(new Student("TestSubj", courseMap));
Map<Course, Integer> courseMap2 = Map.of(courses.get(0), 1, courses.get(1), 3);
students.add(new Student("TestSubj2", courseMap2));
diplomaProjects.add(new DiplomaProject("Project1", students));
diplomaProjects.add(new DiplomaProject("Project2", List.of(students.get(1))));
log.info("Dimploma projects are " + diplomaProjectTitles(diplomaProjects));
}
this way Project 1 will have a student with math101 with grade 3 and one with grade 1, and Project2 will have a student with math101 with grade 1. As expected, the result of the filtering method is only project1

I want to get a List of diploma project titles, from the students that have taken a Course identified by the given courseId. They will also need to have passed the course with grade of 2 or higher.
In your method diplomaProjectTitle you're actually losing the access to the titles of the diploma projects at the very beginning of the stream pipe-line because the very first operation extracts authors from the stream element.
You need to need the stream to of type Stream<DiplomaProject> in order to get a list of diploma project titles as a result. Therefore, all the logic needed to filter the desired diploma project should reside in the filter() operation.
That's how it might be implemented:
public static List<String> diplomaProjectTitle(List<DiplomaProject> diplomaProjects,
String courseId,
Integer grade) {
return diplomaProjects.stream()
.filter(diplomaProject -> diplomaProject.getAuthors().stream()
.anyMatch(student ->
student.getCourseList().getOrDefault(courseId, 0) >= grade
)
)
.map(DiplomaProject::getTitle)
.toList(); // or .collect(Collectors.toList()) for JDK version earlier than 16
}
A couple of important notes:
Avoid using public fields and accessing the fields from outside the class directly rather than via getters.
Pay attention to the names of your method, variables, etc. The name courseList is confusing because it's actually not a List. This map should rather be named gradeByCourse to describe its purpose in a clear way.
Leverage abstractions - write your code against interfaces. See What does it mean to "program to an interface"?
Pay attention to the types you're working with keySet().equals("math1001") even IDE is capable to tell you that something is wrong here because Set can never be equal to a String.

A step-by-step way of thinking:
We need to filter projects based on the criteria that these have at least one author (student) who has passed a specific course (courseId) with a grade >= 2 (another filter).
dipProjects.stream().filter(p->p.getAuthors().stream().anyMatch(s->s.getCourseList().getOrDefault(courseId,0) >= grade)).map(p->p.getTitle()).collect(Collectors.toList());

How to iterate over a map and return all the ones that match?

I have made various methods for someone to add a key which then includes various values from another created object.
I need to then allow a user to search using a method name which will then return all the people that match their search.
public Set findPerson(String aTrade)
{
Set<String> suitablePeople = new HashSet<>();
for (String test : this.contractors.keySet())
{
System.out.println(contractors.get(test));
if (contractors.containsValue(aTrade))
{
suitablePeople.add(test);
}
}
return suitablePeople;
}
I know this code is wrong but I'm just not sure how I can simply go through and find a value and return all the people that have this value within a range of values. For instance, their age, job, location.

Some assumptions, because your question is rather unclear:
contractors is a Map<String, ContractorData> field. Possibly ContractorData is some collection type (such as MyList<Contractor>), or named differently. The String represents a username.
aTrade is a string, and you want to search for it within the various ContractorData objects stored in your map. Then you want to return a collection of all username strings that are mapped to a ContractorData object that contains a trade that matches aTrade.
Whatever ContractorData might be, it has method containsValue(String) which returns true if the contractordata is considered a match. (If that was pseudocode and it's actually a List<String>, just .contains() would do the job. If it's something else you're going to have to elaborate in your question.
Then, there is no fast search available; maps allow you to do quick searches on their key (and not any particular property of their key, and not on their value or any particular property of their value). Thus, any search inherently implies you go through all the key/value mappings and check for each, individually, if it matches or not. If this is not an acceptable performance cost, you'd have to make another map, one that maps this property to something. This may have to be a multimap, and is considerably more complicated.
The performance cost is not important
Okay, then, just.. loop, but note that the .entrySet() gives you both key (which you'll need in case it's a match) and value (which you need to check if it matches), so that's considerably simpler.
var out = new ArrayList<String>();
for (var e : contracts.entrySet()) {
if (e.getValue().containsValue(aTrade)) out.add(e.getKey());
}
return out;
or if you prefer stream syntax:
return contracts.entrySet().stream()
.filter(e -> e.getValue().containsValue(aTrade))
.map(Map.Entry::getKey)
.toList();
The performance cost is important
Then it gets complicated. You'd need a single object that 'wraps' around at least two maps, and you need this because you want these maps to never go 'out of sync'. You need one map for each thing you want to have a find method for.
Thus, if you want a getTradesForUser(String username) as well as a findAllUsersWithTrade(String aTrade), you need two maps; one that maps users to trades, one that maps trades to users. In addition, you need the concept of a multimap: A map that maps one key to (potentially) more than one value.
You can use guava's MultiMaps (guava is a third party library with some useful stuff, such as multimaps), or, you roll your own, which is trivial:
given:
class ContractData {
private List<String> trades;
public boolean containsValue(String trade) {
return trades.contains(trade);
}
public List<String> getTrades() {
return trades;
}
}
then:
class TradesStore {
Map<String, ContractData> usersToTrades = new HashMap<>();
Map<String, List<String>> tradesToUsers = new HashMap<>();
public void put(String username, ContractData contract) {
usersToTrades.put(username, contract);
for (String trade : contract.getTrades()) {
tradesToUsers.computeIfAbsent(username, k -> new ArrayList<>()).add(username);
}
}
public Collection<String> getUsersForTrade(String trade) {
return tradesToUsers.getOrDefault(trade, List.of());
}
}
The getOrDefault method lets you specify a default value in case the trade isn't in the map. Thus, if you ask for 'get me all users which have trade [SOME_VALUE_NOBODY_IS_TRADING]', this returns an empty list (List.of() gives you an empty list), which is the right answer (null would be wrong - there IS an answer, and it is: Nobody. null is means: Unknown / irrelevant, and is therefore incorrect here).
The computeIfAbsent method just gets you the value associated with a key, but, if there is no such key/value mapping yet, you also give it the code required to make it. Here, we pass a function (k -> new ArrayList<>()) which says: just.. make a new arraylist first if I ask for a key that isn't yet in there, put it in the map, and then return that (k is the key, which we don't need to make the initial value).
Thus, computeIfAbsent and getOrDefault in combination make the concept of a multimap easy to write.

Assuming that your Map's values are instances of Contractor and the Contractor class has a Set<String> of trades (implied by the contains method call) and a getTrades() method that returns the list you could do it like this. Not certain what value the Map key would play in this.
get the values from the map and stream them.
filter only those Contractors that have the appropriate trade.
aggregate to a set of able contractors.
Set<Contractor> suitablePeople =
contractors.values()
.stream()
.filter(c->c.getTrades().contains(aTrade))
.collect(Collectors.toSet());
Note that a possible improvement would be to have a map like the following.
Map<String, Set<Contractors>> // where the key is the desired trade.
Then you could just get the Contractors with a single lookup up for each desired trade.
Set<Contractors> plumbers = mapByTrade.get("plumbers"); // all done.
Here is how you would set it up. The Contractor class is at the end. It takes a name and a variable array of trades.
Set<Contractor> contractors = Set.of(
new Contractor("Acme", "plumbing", "electrical", "masonry", "roofing", "carpet"),
new Contractor("Joe's plumbing", "plumbing"),
new Contractor("Smith", "HVAC", "electrical"),
new Contractor("Ace", "electrical"));
Then, iterate over the list of contractors to create the map. Then those are grouped by trade, and each contractor that matches is put in the associated set for that trade.
Map<String,Set<Contractor>> mapByTrade = new HashMap<>();
for (Contractor c : contractors) {
for (String trade : c.getTrades()) {
mapByTrade.computeIfAbsent(trade, v->new HashSet<>()).add(c);
}
}
And here it is in action.
Set<Contractor> plumbers = mapByTrade.get("plumbing");
System.out.println(plumbers);
System.out.println(mapByTrade.get("electrical"));
System.out.println(mapByTrade.get("HVAC"));
prints
[Acme, Joe's plumbing]
[Ace, Acme, Smith]
[Smith]
And here is the Contractor class.
class Contractor {
private Set<String> trades;
private String name;
#Override
public int hashCode() {
return name.hashCode();
}
#Override
public boolean equals(Object ob) {
if (ob == name) {
return true;
}
if (ob == null) {
return false;
}
if (ob instanceof Contractor) {
return ((Contractor)ob).name.equals(this.name);
}
return false;
}
public Contractor(String name, String...trades) {
this.name = name;
this.trades = new HashSet<>(Arrays.asList(trades));
}
public Set<String> getTrades() {
return trades;
}
#Override
public String toString() {
return name;
}
}

JAVA : Best performance-wise method to find an object stored in hashMap

I have a bunch of objects stored in hashMap<Long,Person> i need to find the person object with a specific attribute without knowing its ID.
for example the person class:
public person{
long id;
String firstName;
String lastName;
String userName;
String password;
String address;
..
(around 7-10 attributes in total)
}
lets say i want to find the object with username = "mike". Is there any method to find it without actually iterating on the whole hash map like this :
for (Map.Entry<Long,Person> entry : map.entrySet()) {
if(entry.getValue().getUserName().equalsIgnoreCase("mike"));
the answers i found here was pretty old.

If you want speed and are always looking for one specific attribute, your best bet is to create another 'cache' hash-map keyed with that attribute.
The memory taken up will be insignificant for less than a million entries and the hash-map lookup will be much much faster than any other solution.
Alternatively you could put all search attributes into a single map (ie. names, and ids). Prefix the keys with something unique if you're concerned with collisions. Something like:
String ID_PREFIX = "^!^ID^!^";
String USERNAME_PREFIX = "^!^USERNAME^!^";
String FIRSTNAME_PREFIX = "^!^FIRSTNAME^!^";
Map<String,Person> personMap = new HashMap<String,Person>();
//add a person
void addPersonToMap(Person person)
{
personMap.put(ID_PREFIX+person.id, person);
personMap.put(USERNAME_PREFIX+person.username, person);
personMap.put(FIRSTNAME_PREFIX+person.firstname, person);
}
//search person
Person findPersonByID(long id)
{
return personMap.get(ID_PREFIX+id);
}
Person findPersonByUsername(String username)
{
return personMap.get(USERNAME_PREFIX+username);
}
//or a more generic version:
//Person foundPerson = findPersonByAttribute(FIRSTNAME_PREFIX, "mike");
Person findPersonByAttribute(String attr, String attr_value)
{
return personMap.get(attr+attr_value);
}
The above assumes that each attribute is unique amongst all the Persons. This might be true for ID and username, but the question specifies firstname=mike which is unlikely to be unique.
In that case you want to abstract with a list, so it would be more like this:
Map<String,List<Person>> personMap = new HashMap<String,List<Person>>();
//add a person
void addPersonToMap(Person person)
{
insertPersonIntoMap(ID_PREFIX+person.id, person);
insertPersonIntoMap(USERNAME_PREFIX+person.username, person);
insertPersonIntoMap(FIRSTNAME_PREFIX+person.firstname, person);
}
//note that List contains no duplicates, so can be called multiple times for the same person.
void insertPersonIntoMap(String key, Person person)
{
List<Person> personsList = personMap.get(key);
if(personsList==null)
personsList = new ArrayList<Person>();
personsList.add(person);
personMap.put(key,personsList);
}
//we know id is unique, so we can just get the only person in the list
Person findPersonByID(long id)
{
List<Person> personList = personMap.get(ID_PREFIX+id);
if(personList!=null)
return personList.get(0);
return null;
}
//get list of persons with firstname
List<Person> findPersonsByFirstName(String firstname)
{
return personMap.get(FIRSTNAME_PREFIX+firstname);
}
At that point you're really getting into a grab-bag design but still very efficient if you're not expecting millions of entries.

The best performance-wise method I can think of is to have another HashMap, with the key being the attribute you want to search for, and the value being a list of objects.
For your example this would be HashMap<String, List<Person>>, with the key being the username. The downside is that you have to maintain two maps.
Note: I've used a List<Person> as the value because we cannot guarantee that username is unique among all users. The same applies for any other field.
For example, to add a Person to this new map you could do:
Map<String, List<Person>> peopleByUsername = new HashMap<>();
// ...
Person p = ...;
peopleByUsername.computeIfAbsent(
p.getUsername(),
k -> new ArrayList<>())
.add(p);
Then, to return all people whose username is i.e. joesmith:
List<Person> matching = peopleByUsername.get("joesmith");

Getting one or a few entries from a volatile map
If the map you're operating on can change often and you only want to get a few entries then iterating over the map's entries is ok since you'd need space and time to build other structures or sort the data as well.
Getting many entries from a volatile map
If you need to get many entries from that map you might get better performance by either sorting the entries first (e.g. build a list and sort that) and then using binary search. Alternatively you could build an intermediate map that uses the attribute(s) you need to search for as its key.
Note, however, that both approaches at least need time so this only yields better performance when you're looking for many entries.
Getting entries multiple times from a "persistent" map
If your map and its valuies doesn't change (or not that often) you could maintain a map attribute -> person. This would mean some effort for the initial setup and updating the additional map (unless your data doesn't change) as well as some memory overhead but speeds up lookups tremendously later on. This is a worthwhile approach when you'd do very little "writes" compared to how often you do lookups and if you can spare the memory overhead (depends on how big those maps would be and how much memory you have to spare).

Consider one hashmap per alternate key.
This will have "high" setup cost,
but will result in quick retrieval by alternate key.
Setup the hashmap using the Long key value.
Run through the hashmap Person objects and create a second hashmap (HashMap<String, Person>) for which username is the key.
Perhaps, fill both hashmaps at the same time.
In your case,
you will end up with something like HashMap<Long, Person> idKeyedMap and HashMap<String, Person> usernameKeyedMap.
You can also put all the key values in the same map,
if you define the map as Map<Object, Person>.
Then,
when you add the
(id, person) pair,
you need to also add the (username, person) pair.
Caveat, this is not a great technique.

What is the best way to solve the problem?
There are many ways to tackle this as you can see in the answers and comments.
How is the Map is being used (and perhaps how it is created). If the Map is built from a select statement with the long id value from a column from a table we might think we should use HashMap<Long, Person>.
Another way to look at the problem is to consider usernames should also be unique (i.e. no two persons should ever share the same username). So instead create the map as a HashMap<String, Person>. With username as the key and the Person object as the value.
Using the latter:
Map<String, Person> users = new HashMap<>();
users = retrieveUsersFromDatabase(); // perform db select and build map
String username = "mike";
users.get(username).
This will be the fastest way to retrieve the object you want to find in a Map containing Person objects as its values.

You can simply convert Hashmap to List using:
List list = new ArrayList(map.values());
Now, you can iterate through the list object easily. This way you can search Hashmap values on any property of Person class not just limiting to firstname.
Only downside is you will end up creating a list object. But using stream api you can further improve code to convert Hashmap to list and iterate in single operation saving space and improved performance with parallel streams.

Sorting and finding of value object can be done by designing and using an appropriate Comparator class.
Comparator Class : Designing a Comparator with respect to a specific attribute can be done as follows:
class UserComparator implements Comparator<Person>{
#Override
public int compare(Person p1, Person p2) {
return p1.userName.compareTo(p2.userName);
}
}
Usage : Comparator designed above can be used as follows:
HashMap<Long, Person> personMap = new HashMap<Long, Person>();
.
.
.
ArrayList<Person> pAL = new ArrayList<Person>(personMap.values()); //create list of values
Collections.sort(pAL,new UserComparator()); // sort the list using comparator
Person p = new Person(); // create a dummy object
p.userName="mike"; // Only set the username
int i= Collections.binarySearch(pAL,p,new UserComparator()); // search the list using comparator
if(i>=0){
Person p1 = pAL.get(Collections.binarySearch(pAL,p,new UserComparator())); //Obtain object if username is present
}else{
System.out.println("Insertion point: "+ i); // Returns a negative value if username is not present
}

How do I add to a set based on a specific predicate in Java?

I have a set in Java containing people:
Set<Person> uniquePeople = new HashSet<Person>();
I also have a list of a ton of people (of whom some possess the same name, eg. there is more than one "Bob" in the world).
List<Person> theWorld = // ... a BIG list of people
I want to iterate through this list and add a person to the uniquePeople set if and only if their name doesn't exist in the set, eg:
for (Person person : theWorld) {
uniquePeople.add(person IFF uniquePeople.doesNotContain(person.name));
}
Is there an easy way to do this in Java? Also, Guava might do this (?) but I haven't used it at all so I would appreciate a point in the right direction.

A better option would be to abandon using a Set and instead use a Map<String, Person> (keyed off of the name).
If you want to use a set, I suggest you use a new object type (that will just contain a name and maybe a reference to a Person).
Make sure you override equals so that it will only compare the names and then you can get a set of all unique people.
You could also subclass person to override the equals to do what you want.
Sets by definition will not do what you want with just a person since they depend entirely on using equals so these are your workaround options. You could also implement (or find online) a set that takes a comparator to use instead of relying on equals but I don't think such a class exists in standard java.

Use Guava's Equivalence to wrap your objects if you don't want to (or can't) override equals and hashCode:
Set<Equivalence.Wrapper<Person>> set = Sets.newHashSet();
Equivalence<Person> personEquivalence = Equivalence.onResultOf(
new Function<Person, String>() {
#Override public String apply(Person p) {
return p.name;
}
});
set.add(personEquivalence.wrap(new Person("Joe", "Doe")));
set.add(personEquivalence.wrap(new Person("Joe", "Doe")));
set.add(personEquivalence.wrap(new Person("Jane", "Doe")));
System.out.println(set);
// [PersonEquivalence#8813f2.wrap(Person{firstName=Jane, lastName=Doe}),
// PersonEquivalence#8813f2.wrap(Person{firstName=Joe, lastName=Doe})]
#DanielWilliams has a good idea too, but using Equivalence.Wrapper is more self-documenting - after all you don't want to create new object other than wrapper.

I am not sure why people got downvoted here.
You absolutely want a Set. Not only do your requirements meet the definition and functionality of 'Set' but Set implementations are designed to quickly identify duplicates either via hash or Comparative identity.
Let's say you had a List implementation that took a deligate and a predicate:
List uniquePeople = new PredicatedList(new ArrayList(),UnqiuePersonPredicate.getInstance())
public class PredicatedList<T> implements List<T> {
private List<T> delegate = null;
private Predicate<T> predicate;
public PredicatedList<List<T> delegate, Predicate p) {
this.delegate = delegate;
this.predicate = p;
}
// implement list methods here and apply 'p' before calling your insertion functions
public boolean add(Person p) {
if(predicate.apply(p))
delegate.add(p);
}
}
For this to work you would need to have a predicate that iterates over the list to find an equal element. This is an O(N) operation. If you use HashSet then it's O(1) < n < O(N). Your amortized identity check is the load factor * N. And, usually much closer to O(1)
If you use TreeSet you will get O(log(n)) because the elements are sorted by identity and you need only log(n) time to binary search.
Define hashCode()/equals based on 'name' or whatever you want and use HashSet or use TreeSet and define Comparable/Comparator
If your return type MUST be a List then do:
Set uniquePeople = new HashSet();
uniquePeople.add(...);
List people = new LinkedList(uniquePeople);

You could do it with guava, the only thing is that Person is going to need an equals/hashcode method.
ImmutableSet<String> smallList = ImmutableSet.of("Eugene","Bob");
ImmutableSet<String> bigList = ImmutableSet.of("Eugene","Bob","Alex","Bob","Alex");
System.out.println(Iterables.concat(smallList, Sets.difference(bigList, smallList)));
//output is going to be : [Eugene, Bob, Alex]

java get sub list from a list of objects

there is a dependent list
Dependents contains
String emp_Id, name etc,
List<Dependent> dependentList;
dependentList contains all the dependent information of an employee.
how to get the list of dependents by providing the emp_Id ?
for example an employee will have 2 or 3 dependents.
ok i dont want to loop over it.
i tried binary search on list using comparator but it does not return the desired data.
already i will loop over the employee list... subsequently i should get the depends of the particular employee...
what will be the best & efficient solution ?

Binary search works only if the list is sorted according to the comparator. For lists that are not sorted or sorted according to other criteria, you have to filter them.
Either loop though the list and do whatever you want to do in the loop body
Or use a filter functionality from a library
If you want to filter, then I recommend Google Collections (or Google Guava, which is a superset of Google collections):
Collection<Dependent> filtered = Collections2.filter(dependentList, new Predicate<Dependent>() {
public boolean apply(Dependent from) {
return from != null && from.getId().equals(id_so_search_for);
}
}
Of course, you are not restricted to .equals(), but can match according to any operation required (e.g. by regular expression).
If searches for one kind of data heavily outweight searches for any other kind of data, then storing them in a Map<kind-of-id, Dependent> may be a good choice as well. You still can retrieve a collection of all stored objects using Map.values().
If one key maps to several items, then either use a Map<kind-of-id, Collection<Dependent>> or (better) consider using existing Multimap functionality: com.google.common.collect.Multimap or org.apache.commons.collections.MultiMap (note that Apache Commons does not have a genericized version of this).

You want to model relationships. I guess, you have the basic dependencies:
Supervisor is-a Employee
Supervisor has-many Employees (Dependants in your case)
So a very basic implementatin could go like this:
public class Employee {
int emp_id;
// more fields, more methods
}
public class Supervisor extends Employee {
private List<Employee> dependants = new ArrayList<Employee>();
// more fields, more methods
public List<Employee> getDependants() {
return dependants;
}
}
public class StaffDirectory {
private Map<Integer, Employee> staff = new HashMap<Integer, Employee>();
public static List<Employee> getAllDependantsOf(int employeeId) {
Employee employee = staff.get(employeeId);
if (employee instanceof Supervisor) {
return ((Supervisor) employee).getDependants());
} else {
return Collections.emptyList();
}
}
}

What have you tried so far? Do you have anything written?
Here is a general guess:
int employeeToFind = 10;//the id to search for
for(Dependant dep : dependentList ) {
if(dep.getEmployeeId() == employeeToFind) {
//do something
}
}
You could also store dependents in a Hashtable<Integer employeeId,List<Dependent>>(); keyed by EmployeeId for an easy lookup.

As alzoid mentioned, a HashMap or HashTable is the perfect data structure for this task. If you have any chance to load your instances of Dependent into such an object, do so.
Still, have this delicious code:
String emp_Id //IDs are usually integer, but I'll go with your example
List<Dependent> dependentList; //assume this is populated
List<Dependent> desiredSublist = new ArrayList<Dependent>();
for(Dependent dep:dependentList){
//make sure to compare with equals in case of Id being String or Integer
if(dep.getId().equals(emp_Id)){
desiredSubList.add(dep);
}
}
//desiredSublist now contains all instances of Dependent that belong to emp_Id.