How to clone ArrayList and also clone its contents?

Question

How can I clone an ArrayList and also clone its items in Java?

For example I have:

ArrayList dogs = getDogs();
ArrayList

        

Answer 1

You will need to iterate on the items, and clone them one by one, putting the clones in your result array as you go.

public static List cloneList(List list) {
    List clone = new ArrayList(list.size());
    for (Dog item : list) clone.add(item.clone());
    return clone;
}

For that to work, obviously, you will have to get your Dog class to implement the Cloneable interface and override the clone() method.