How to select a random key from a HashMap in Java?

Question

I\'m working with a large ArrayList>, and I would repeatedly need to select a random key from a random HashMap (and do some stuff with it).

Answer 1

I managed to find a solution without performance loss. I will post it here since it may help other people -- and potentially answer several open questions on this topic (I'll search for these later).

What you need is a second custom Set-like data structure to store the keys -- not a list as some suggested here. Lists-like data structures are to expensive to remove items from. The operations needed are adding/removing elements in constant time (to keep it up-to-date with the HashMap) and a procedure to select the random element. The following class MySet does exactly this

class MySet {
     ArrayList contents = new ArrayList();
     HashMap indices = new HashMap();
     Random R = new Random();

     //selects random element in constant time
     A randomKey() {
         return contents.get(R.nextInt(contents.size()));
     }

     //adds new element in constant time
     void add(A a) {
         indices.put(a,contents.size());
         contents.add(a);
     }

     //removes element in constant time
     void remove(A a) {
         int index = indices.get(a);
         contents.set(index,contents.get(contents.size()-1));
         contents.remove(contents.size()-1);
         indices.set(contents.get(contents.size()-1),index);
         indices.remove(a);
     }
}