Java: Sorting text file lines - java

I'm using eclipse and I'm trying to sort a text file with about 40 lines that look like this:
1,Terminator,1984,Schwarzenegger
2,Avatar,2009,Worthington
3,Avengers,2012,Downey
4,Starwars,1977,Hammill
5,Alien,1979,Weaver
I want sort them alphabetically by the second field so that the text file is altered to look like this:
5,Alien,1979,Weaver
2,Avatar,2009,Worthington
3,Avengers,2012,Downey
4,Starwars,1977,Hammill
1,Terminator,1984,Schwarzenegger
I'm fairly certain I should be doing something involving tokenizing them (which I've already done to display it) and a BufferedWriter but I can't for the life of me think of a way to do it by the second or third field and I feel like I'm missing something obvious.

You will first of course need to read a file, which you can learn how to do here.
Java: How to read a text file
This example will provide several ways you may write the file once you have sorted your data.
How do I create a file and write to it in Java?
As for sorting, I recommend creating a class Movie, which would look similar to
public class Movie implements Comparable<Movie> {
private String name;
private String leadActor;
private Date releaseDate;
public Movie(String name, String leadActor, String releaseDate) {
}
#Override
public int compareTo(Movie other) {
}
}
Ill leave it to you fill in the rest of the constructor and compareTo method. Once you have your compareTo method you will be able to call Collections.sort(List list) passing your list of Movie.
Here are some resources on implementing Comparable.
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/collections/interfaces/order.html
Why should a Java class implement comparable?

Your comparator
class SampleComparator implements Comparator<String> {
#Override
public int compare(String o1, String o2) {
String array1[] = o1.split(",");
String array2[] = o2.split(",");
return array1[1].compareTo(array2[1]);
}
}
Your Sorting
String [] lines= {"1,Terminator,1984,Schwarzenegger",
"2,Avatar,2009,Worthington",
"3,Avengers,2012,Downey",
"4,Starwars,1977,Hammill",
"5,Alien,1979,Weaver"};
List<String> rowList = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList(lines));
Collections.sort(rowList, new SampleComparator());
for (String string : rowList) {
System.out.println(string);
}
Your Output
5,Alien,1979,Weaver
2,Avatar,2009,Worthington
3,Avengers,2012,Downey
4,Starwars,1977,Hammill
1,Terminator,1984,Schwarzenegger
If you have any doubt on this let me know..

The String class has a very helpful static method called "split". All you do is call split and put it in the delimiter and it gives back a String array with the split up string.
Here's an example:
String line = "How,Now,Brown,Cow";
String[] splitLine = line.split(",");
for(String l: splitLine)
{
System.out.println(l);
}
The above code would print the following:
How
Now
Brown
Cow
Hopefully you can use this and adapt it to your problem.
Good luck!

What you want to do is to use java.util.Comparator and Collections.sort. More on this can be found: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/Comparator.html

Following #Tyler answer. You can have a default implementation in the Movie class and additional sort orders that you can implement by calling Collections.sort(movieList, new MyComparator()); Here comes an example of both.
package com.stackoverflow;
public class Movie implements Comparable<Movie> {
private String name;
private String leadActor;
private String releaseDate;
public Movie(String name, String leadActor, String releaseDate) {
this.name = name;
this.leadActor = leadActor;
this.releaseDate = releaseDate;
}
public String getName() {
return name;
}
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public String getLeadActor() {
return leadActor;
}
public void setLeadActor(String leadActor) {
this.leadActor = leadActor;
}
public String getReleaseDate() {
return releaseDate;
}
public void setReleaseDate(String releaseDate) {
this.releaseDate = releaseDate;
}
#Override
public int compareTo(Movie other) {
return getName().compareTo(other.getName());
}
}
And if you want to make your own comparator called on your collection:
package com.stackoverflow;
import java.util.Comparator;
public class MyComparator implements Comparator<Movie> {
#Override
public int compare(Movie o1, Movie o2) {
return o1.getLeadActor().compareTo(o2.getLeadActor());
}
}

Try like this :--
ArrayList ar=new ArrayList();
String [] arr=new String[10];
int i=0;
try {
Scanner sc=new Scanner(file);
while (sc.hasNextLine())
{
String ss=sc.nextLine();
i=i+1;
arr[i]=ss;
}
ar.add(arr[5]);
ar.add(arr[2]);
ar.add(arr[3]);
ar.add(arr[4]);
ar.add(arr[1]);
System.out.println(ar);
}

This solution uses Java 8 APIs.
You don't really need to have an explicit implementation of Comparator or create a Comparable class. Using Comparator.comparing with lambda we can elegantly sort lines by custom key.
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.*;
import java.util.Comparator;
import java.util.stream.Stream;
public class FileSortWithStreams {
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
Path initialFile = Paths.get("files/initial.txt");
Path sortedFile = Paths.get("files/sorted.txt");
int sortingKeyIndex = 1;
String separator = ",";
Stream<CharSequence> sortedLines =
Files.lines(initialFile)
.map(s -> s.split(separator))
.sorted(Comparator.comparing(s -> s[sortingKeyIndex]))
.map(s -> String.join(separator, s));
Files.write(sortedFile, sortedLines::iterator, StandardOpenOption.CREATE);
}
}

Related

contains method with list of objects in Java

I have a list of objects "SaleItem". they are all objects of the same class. each object has a String field "name" and an int field "value". I want to see if one of the objects contains a name. It seems that I can't use the "contains" method to do this. I see two solutions. one is to iterate through all the objects to check if one has said name:
for (SaleItem item: myList) {
if (item.getName() == "banana") {
// do stuff
}
}
The other solution would be to create a new list of Strings from "myList" and use the contains method on that:
ArrayList<String> nameList = new ArrayList<>();
for (SaleItem item: myList) {
nameList.add(item.getName());
}
if (nameList.contains("banana")) {
// do stuff
}
I imagine the first method would be most efficient if I'm only doing it once, and the second would be more efficient if I'm doing it many times. Being a bit of a newbie without a formal education, I don't know what's proper in this situation.
Since SaleItem.getName() returns a string, you should be able to use "contains" method.
It seems like you have initialized the ArrayList or the SaleItem object incorrectly.
public class TestApp {
public static void main(String[] args) {
List<SaleItem> list = new ArrayList<SaleItem>();
SaleItem s1 = new SaleItem();
s1.setName("banana");
s1.setValue(1);
SaleItem s2 = new SaleItem();
s2.setName("apple");
s2.setValue(2);
list.add(s1);
list.add(s2);
for (SaleItem item: list) {
if (item.getName().contains("banana")) {
System.out.println("Pass");
}
}
}
}
class SaleItem {
private String name;
private int value;
public String getName() {
return name;
}
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public int getValue() {
return value;
}
public void setValue(int value) {
this.value = value;
}
}
Try with this code
public class SaleItem {
private String itemName;
public String getItemName() {
return itemName;
}
public SaleItem setItemName(String itemName) {
this.itemName = itemName;
return this;
}
#Override
public String toString() {
return "[SaleItem : { itemName = " + this.getItemName() + " }]";
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
ArrayList<SaleItem> nameList = new ArrayList<>();
nameList.add(new SaleItem().setItemName("banana"));
nameList.add(new SaleItem().setItemName("grape"));
nameList.add(new SaleItem().setItemName("watermelon"));
nameList.add(new SaleItem().setItemName("orange"));
nameList.add(new SaleItem().setItemName("guava"));
for (SaleItem item : nameList) {
if (item.toString().contains("banana")) {
// Do this
}
}
}
}
A List's .contains method isn't magical, it will generally just loop through the elements checking for equality, O(n) linear performance.
Your first solution is probably fine.
If you really did expect repeated access and wanted better than linear performance on subsequent lookups, you'd probably want to construct a Map<String,SaleItem>, or a Set<String> depending on what you wanted to do with it. But those solutions would normally only work on exact matches. Once you need case-insensitive matches, they have to be TreeMap or TreeSet with a case-insensitive comparator. And if you want partial matching (like using String.contains() or a regular expression), you'd want to go back to a linear search.
But don't do any of that unless you have to. Keep it simple.

Multiple values for a single parameter

How to pass multiple values to a single parameter for a particular method in java.
e.g. suppose i have a method with single parameter 'childname', that gets names of all the children in a family.
Now how can i pass multiple values to this parameter to get all different names.
public String getChildrenNames(String childname)
{
children= childname+ familyName;
return children;
}
You would typically implement this using either an Array, or a Collection.
eg:
public String[] getNamesOfChildren()
or
public Collection<String> getNamesOfChildren()
As people say you need to pass them as an Array, so your code should be like this:
String familyName = "Family";
public String[] getChildrenNames(String[] childnames)
{
String[] result = new String[childnames.length];
for(int i=0; i<childnames.length; i++)
{
result[i] = childnames[i] + " " +familyName;
}
return result;
}
public void main()
{
String[] childnames = {"Name1", "Name2", "Name3"};
String[] childnamesAux = getChildrenNames(childnames);
}
With this your childnamesAux variable should have: {"Name1 Family", "Name2 Family", "Name3 Family"}
If you can't change the signature of your method, then you can use concatenation, then in your method you can split this parameter for example :
String childname = firstname + "," + lastname;
getChildrenNames(childname);
so you can split this parametter to get multiple names,
String[] spl = childname.split(",");
But there are better ways then this, if you can change the signature of your method, so you can create a method which can take an array or list of names instead :
public String getChildrenNames(String...childnames) {
or
public String getChildrenNames(Lis<String> childnames) {
You can even create an Object for example :
class Person{
private String firstname;
private String lastname;
//getters and setters
}
Then your method should take an array or a list of Person Object :
public String getChildrenNames(List<Person> childname) {
You can try this
public static String child(String... name){
String[] array=name;
String tem;
if(name.length==1)
return name[0];
for(int counter=0; counter<array.length;counter+=2){
array[0]=name[counter]+name[counter+1];
}
tem=array[0];
return tem;
}
now if you call it
child("Paul","walker");
the output will be
Paul Walker
hope this helped
you can use var args like below
public String getChildrenNames(String... childname)
{
for(String s:childname)
{
children= childname+ s;
}
return children;
}
example
public class Test {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println(tes("s","d","s"));
}
static String tes(String... x)
{
String y="";
for(String s:x)
{
y=y+s;
}
return y;
}
}
output: sds

Define static data in separate place to reuse

I have list of string data that are not change during any operation inside my program. But i need to access those data in several places by using key.
As a example: (1,ANN)(2,ALEX)(3,ANDROW)
Is there any way to store these data in separate class.Can I use java enum for this. thank you
With the use of enum you can implement something like below:
public enum Name {
ONE {
#Override
public String getName() {
return "ANN";
}
},
TWO {
#Override
public String getName() {
return "ALEX";
}
},
THREE {
#Override
public String getName() {
return "ANDROW";
}
};
public abstract String getName();
}
Then you can get the the names :
System.out.println(Name.ONE.getName());
This is really a good candidate for using Map. Where you can use your numbers as keys and String's as values.
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/collections/interfaces/map.html
Map<Integer, String> map = new HashMap<Integer,String>();
Map<Integer,String> is one option and if key is also constant you could define string variable like
public static final string ONE = "ANN";
public static final string TWO = "ALEX";
A different way to use enums to define a statically mapping:
public enum Names {
ONE("ANN"),
TWO("ALEX"),
THREE("ANDREW");
private final String name;
private Names(String name){
this.name=name;
}
public String getName() {
return this.name;
}
}
This is only applicable to real-static values (change to values does mean a code change), but you can easily define multiple properties as well.
You can do the following:
import java.util.HashMap;
public class Main {
static HashMap<Integer,String>data = new HashMap<>();
public static void main(String[] args) {
// write your code here
data.put(data.size(),"ALEX"); // if you want 1-based indexing,
data.put(data.size(),"ANDROW"); // then use data.size()+1
data.put(data.size(),"ANN"); // instead of data.size()
for (int i = 0; i<data.size(); i++){
System.out.println(i+" : "+data.get(i)); // use i+1 if 1-based indexing
}
}
}

Sorting a Set of selfmade objects to an ArrayList (Java)

So I have to sort a Set (preferably a TreeSet) of items from the class "Article":
public abstract class Article {
String title;
String articleNumber;
public Article(String title, String articleNumber) {
this.title = title;
this.articleNumber = articleNumber;
}
public String getArticleNumber() {
return this.articleNumber;
}
}
public class Book extends Article {
String author;
public Book(String author, String title, String articleNumber) {
super(title, articleNumber);
this.author = author;
}
}
public class Song extends Article {
String interpret;
public Song(String interpret, String title, String articleNumber) {
super(title, articleNumber);
this.interpret = interpret;
}
}
Article is a nested class of OnlineShop which holds the original Set of Articles.
I've implemented the methods to add and remove articels, but I still need an method to sort the Articles of the set: Set<Article> availableArticles = new TreeSet<Article>();
according to the articleNumber value in an ArrayList.
I've tried this but it seems not to work: where unSorted is a List of Articles, but not the String values(how do i extract this?)
Collections.sort(unSorted, new Comparator<Article>() {
#Override
public int compare(Article a, Article b) {
return a.getArticleNumber().compareTo(b.getArticleNumber());
}
});
}
I think your atempt wasn't wrong. I assume that your article number is of the format "1234". Altough it is a String object, wich means, that if you want to sort it comparing its numbers, you have to parse the Strings to an int. Otherwise your comparator interprets your numbers as it's Byte based characters-which creates a mess-.
The untested solution, if my assumption is correct, looks like:
Collections.sort(unSorted, new Comparator<Article>() {
#Override
public int compare(Article a, Article b) {
return Integer.compare(Integer.parseInt(a.getArticleNumber()),Integer.parseInt(b.getArticleNumber()));
}
in my opinion it looks like a mess...better do this:
Collections.sort(unSorted, new Comparator<Article>() {
#Override
public int compare(Article a, Article b) {
int articleNumberOne = Integer.parseInt(a.getArticleNumber());
int articleNumberTwo = Integer.parseInt(b.getArticleNumber());
return Integer.compare(articleNumberOne, articleNumberTwo);
}
}
thanks to Holger for his advice :D
Thank you all for you input, ive achieved what i wanted with this method:
public ArrayList<Article> sortByArticleNumber() {
if (availableArticles.isEmpty()) {
System.out.println("No Articles available");
return new ArrayList<Article>();
}
ArrayList<Article> articles= new ArrayList<Article>(availableArticles);
// sort Methode wird überschrieben für ArrayList<Article> articles
Collections.sort(articles, new Comparator<Article>() {
#Override
public int compare(Article a, Article b) {
int a1 = Integer.parseInt(a.getArticleNumber());
int b1 = Integer.parseInt(b.getArticleNumber());
return Integer.compare(a1, b1);
}
});
System.out.println(articles.toString());
return articles;
}
public static void main(String args[]) {
try {
OnlineShop myShop = new OnlineShop();
//Set<Article> availableArticles = new TreeSet<Article>();
//availableArticles.add(myShop.new Article ("Dell", "1234567"){});
//availableArticles.add(myShop.new Article ("Alienware", "987654"){});
myShop.addArticle(myShop.new Article ("Dell", "9999"){});
myShop.addArticle(myShop.new Article ("Asio", "9888"){});
myShop.addArticle(myShop.new Article ("Alienware", "9001"){});
myShop.addArticle(myShop.new Song ("SSIO", "Bonn17", "5346"));
myShop.sortByArticleNumber();
}
catch (Throwable ex) {
System.err.println("Uncaught exception - " + ex.getMessage());
ex.printStackTrace(System.err);
}
}
The result is:
[Song [interpret=SSIO, title=Bonn17, articleNumber=5346]
, Article [title=Alienware, articleNumber=9001]
, Article [title=Asio, articleNumber=9888]
, Article [title=Dell, articleNumber=9999]
]

Sort a vector of custom objects

How can I sort a vector of my custom object and choose which property to sort by?
I did see this question & answer but I'm not too sure what its sorting it based on. Code example would be prefered to "methodology".
Sort a Vector of custom objects
public class ItemLocation {
String icon;
String title;
String message;
String subtext;
String deviceId;
double latCoords;
double lngCoords;
int expiary;
int id;
double proximity;
String locSeen;
}
Below is a example that will allow you to sort by a specified field of ItemLocation:
public void sort(final String field, List<ItemLocation> itemLocationList) {
Collections.sort(itemLocationList, new Comparator<ItemLocation>() {
#Override
public int compare(ItemLocation o1, ItemLocation o2) {
if(field.equals("icon")) {
return o1.icon.compareTo(o2.icon);
} if(field.equals("title")) {
return o1.title.compareTo(o2.title);
} else if(field.equals("message")) {
return o1.message.compareTo(o2.message);
}
.
. fill in the rest of the fields...
.
else if(field.equals("locSeen")) {
return o1.locSeen.compareTo(o2.locSeen);
}
}
});
}
See the JavaDocs for java.util.Comparable and java.util.Comparator.
A class that implements Comparable can be compared against other instances of that class. This is useful to implement a natural search order. To allow ordering other than the class's natural order you would need to implement a Comparator. A Comparator is a separate object that is capable of comparing two other objects using whatever criteria it wants.
In your case you'd probably want to implement a Comparator for each of the different properties that you want to order by, or one that can be configured.
Comparable and Comparator both use the same idea to determine ordering: A method returns less than 0, 0, or greater than 0 to inform the caller which of the 2 objects is ordered first. In the case of Comparable the first object is this.
This one works:
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.Comparator;
import java.util.List;
/**
* ComparableDemo
* #author Michael
* #since 2/24/11
*/
public class ComparableDemo
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
List<ItemLocation> itemLocations = new ArrayList<ItemLocation>();
for (String arg : args)
{
itemLocations.add(new ItemLocation(arg));
}
System.out.println("before sort: " + itemLocations);
Comparator<ItemLocation> comparator = new ItemLocationComparator();
Collections.sort(itemLocations, comparator);
System.out.println("after sort: " + itemLocations);
}
}
class ItemLocation
{
String icon;
String title;
String message;
String subtext;
String deviceId;
double latCoords;
double lngCoords;
int expiary;
int id;
double proximity;
String locSeen;
ItemLocation(String message)
{
this("", "", message, "", "", 0.0, 0.0, 0, 0, 0.0, "");
}
ItemLocation(String icon, String title, String message, String subtext, String deviceId, double latCoords, double lngCoords, int expiary, int id, double proximity, String locSeen)
{
this.icon = icon;
this.title = title;
this.message = message;
this.subtext = subtext;
this.deviceId = deviceId;
this.latCoords = latCoords;
this.lngCoords = lngCoords;
this.expiary = expiary;
this.id = id;
this.proximity = proximity;
this.locSeen = locSeen;
}
#Override
public String toString()
{
final StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.append("ItemLocation");
sb.append("{message='").append(message).append('\'');
sb.append('}');
return sb.toString();
}
}
class ItemLocationComparator implements Comparator<ItemLocation>
{
public int compare(ItemLocation o1, ItemLocation o2)
{
return o1.message.compareTo(o2.message);
}
}
Here's the output:
C:\JDKs\jdk1.6.0_21\bin\java -Didea.launcher.port=7534 "-Didea.launcher.bin.path=C:\Program Files\JetBrains\IntelliJ IDEA 10.0.2\bin" -Dfile.encoding=windows-1252 com.intellij.rt.execution.application.AppMain ComparableDemo zeb meme apple
before sort: [ItemLocation{message='zeb'}, ItemLocation{message='meme'}, ItemLocation{message='apple'}]
after sort: [ItemLocation{message='apple'}, ItemLocation{message='meme'}, ItemLocation{message='zeb'}]
Process finished with exit code 0
Let's say we have a class with an int and a string. I can define how one object of that class may be compared against other.
I could choose any criteria. For instance, I may decide to sort based on the int. If I happen to have two int's with the same value, I may decide the string as an additional criteria, something like this:
// this class *knows* how to "compare" against him self
class CustomObject implements Comparable<CustomObject> {
String aString;
int aInt;
...
public int compareTo(CustomObject two ) {
int diff = this.aInt - two.aInt;//<-- compare ints
if( diff != 0 ) { // they have different int
return diff;
}
return this.aString.compareTo( two.aString );//<-- compare strings...
}
...
}
Here's a complete running demo ...
import java.util.*;
class SortDemo {
public static void main( String ... args ) {
// create a bunch and sort them
List<CustomObject> list = Arrays.asList(
new CustomObject(3, "Blah"),
new CustomObject(30, "Bar"),
new CustomObject(1, "Zzz"),
new CustomObject(1, "Aaa")
);
System.out.println( "before: "+ list );
Collections.sort( list );
System.out.println( "after : "+ list );
}
}
// this class *knows* how to "compare" against him self
class CustomObject implements Comparable<CustomObject> {
String aString;
int aInt;
CustomObject( int i, String s ) {
aInt = i;
aString = s;
}
// comparable interface lets you
// specify "HOW" to compare two
// custom objects
public int compareTo(CustomObject two ) {
// I migth compare them using the int first
// and if they're the same, use the string...
int diff = this.aInt - two.aInt;
if( diff != 0 ) { // they have different int
return diff;
}
// else let the strings compare them selves
return this.aString.compareTo( two.aString );
}
public String toString(){
return "CustomObject[aInt="+aInt+", aString="+aString+"]";
}
}
Here's the output:
before: [CustomObject[aInt=3, aString=Blah], CustomObject[aInt=30, aString=Bar], CustomObject[aInt=1, aString=Zzz], CustomObject[aInt=1, aString=Aaa]]
after : [CustomObject[aInt=1, aString=Aaa], CustomObject[aInt=1, aString=Zzz], CustomObject[aInt=3, aString=Blah], CustomObject[aInt=30, aString=Bar]]
I hope that's clear enough
You can also pass a custom comparator. Let me know if you need a sample of that.

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