Java 8 Distinct by property

Question

In Java 8 how can I filter a collection using the Stream API by checking the distinctness of a property of each object?

For example I have a list of

Answer 1

While the highest upvoted answer is absolutely best answer wrt Java 8, it is at the same time absolutely worst in terms of performance. If you really want a bad low performant application, then go ahead and use it. Simple requirement of extracting a unique set of Person Names shall be achieved by mere "For-Each" and a "Set". Things get even worse if list is above size of 10.

Consider you have a collection of 20 Objects, like this:

public static final List testList = Arrays.asList(
            new SimpleEvent("Tom"), new SimpleEvent("Dick"),new SimpleEvent("Harry"),new SimpleEvent("Tom"),
            new SimpleEvent("Dick"),new SimpleEvent("Huckle"),new SimpleEvent("Berry"),new SimpleEvent("Tom"),
            new SimpleEvent("Dick"),new SimpleEvent("Moses"),new SimpleEvent("Chiku"),new SimpleEvent("Cherry"),
            new SimpleEvent("Roses"),new SimpleEvent("Moses"),new SimpleEvent("Chiku"),new SimpleEvent("gotya"),
            new SimpleEvent("Gotye"),new SimpleEvent("Nibble"),new SimpleEvent("Berry"),new SimpleEvent("Jibble"));

Where you object SimpleEvent looks like this:

public class SimpleEvent {

private String name;
private String type;

public SimpleEvent(String name) {
    this.name = name;
    this.type = "type_"+name;
}

public String getName() {
    return name;
}

public void setName(String name) {
    this.name = name;
}

public String getType() {
    return type;
}

public void setType(String type) {
    this.type = type;
}
}

And to test, you have JMH code like this,(Please note, im using the same distinctByKey Predicate mentioned in accepted answer) :

@Benchmark
@OutputTimeUnit(TimeUnit.SECONDS)
public void aStreamBasedUniqueSet(Blackhole blackhole) throws Exception{

    Set uniqueNames = testList
            .stream()
            .filter(distinctByKey(SimpleEvent::getName))
            .map(SimpleEvent::getName)
            .collect(Collectors.toSet());
    blackhole.consume(uniqueNames);
}

@Benchmark
@OutputTimeUnit(TimeUnit.SECONDS)
public void aForEachBasedUniqueSet(Blackhole blackhole) throws Exception{
    Set uniqueNames = new HashSet<>();

    for (SimpleEvent event : testList) {
        uniqueNames.add(event.getName());
    }
    blackhole.consume(uniqueNames);
}

public static void main(String[] args) throws RunnerException {
    Options opt = new OptionsBuilder()
            .include(MyBenchmark.class.getSimpleName())
            .forks(1)
            .mode(Mode.Throughput)
            .warmupBatchSize(3)
            .warmupIterations(3)
            .measurementIterations(3)
            .build();

    new Runner(opt).run();
}

Then you'll have Benchmark results like this:

Benchmark                                  Mode  Samples        Score  Score error  Units
c.s.MyBenchmark.aForEachBasedUniqueSet    thrpt        3  2635199.952  1663320.718  ops/s
c.s.MyBenchmark.aStreamBasedUniqueSet     thrpt        3   729134.695   895825.697  ops/s

And as you can see, a simple For-Each is 3 times better in throughput and less in error score as compared to Java 8 Stream.

Higher the throughput, better the performance