How to compare objects by multiple fields

Question

Assume you have some objects which have several fields they can be compared by:

public class Person {

    private String firstName;
    private String lastN         


        

Answer 1

You can also have a look at Enum that implements Comparator.

http://tobega.blogspot.com/2008/05/beautiful-enums.html

e.g.

Collections.sort(myChildren, Child.Order.ByAge.descending());

Answer 2

Instead of comparison methods you may want to just define several types of "Comparator" subclasses inside the Person class. That way you can pass them into standard Collections sorting methods.

Answer 3

If there are multiple ways a user might order person, you could also have multiple Comparators setup as constants somewhere. Most of the sort operations and sorted collections take a comparator as a parameter.

Answer 4

//Following is the example in jdk 1.8
package com;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Comparator;
import java.util.List;

class User {
    private String firstName;
    private String lastName;
    private Integer age;

    public Integer getAge() {
        return age;
    }

    public User setAge(Integer age) {
        this.age = age;
        return this;
    }

    public String getFirstName() {
        return firstName;
    }

    public User setFirstName(String firstName) {
        this.firstName = firstName;
        return this;
    }

    public String getLastName() {
        return lastName;
    }

    public User setLastName(String lastName) {
        this.lastName = lastName;
        return this;
    }

}

public class MultiFieldsComparision {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<User> users = new ArrayList<User>();

        User u1 = new User().setFirstName("Pawan").setLastName("Singh").setAge(38);
        User u2 = new User().setFirstName("Pawan").setLastName("Payal").setAge(37);
        User u3 = new User().setFirstName("Anuj").setLastName("Kumar").setAge(60);
        User u4 = new User().setFirstName("Anuj").setLastName("Kumar").setAge(43);
        User u5 = new User().setFirstName("Pawan").setLastName("Chamoli").setAge(44);
        User u6 = new User().setFirstName("Pawan").setLastName("Singh").setAge(5);

        users.add(u1);
        users.add(u2);
        users.add(u3);
        users.add(u4);
        users.add(u5);
        users.add(u6);

        System.out.println("****** Before Sorting ******");

        users.forEach(user -> {
            System.out.println(user.getFirstName() + " , " + user.getLastName() + " , " + user.getAge());
        });

        System.out.println("****** Aftre Sorting ******");

        users.sort(
                Comparator.comparing(User::getFirstName).thenComparing(User::getLastName).thenComparing(User::getAge));

        users.forEach(user -> {
            System.out.println(user.getFirstName() + " , " + user.getLastName() + " , " + user.getAge());
        });

    }

}

Answer 5

import com.google.common.collect.ComparisonChain;

/**
 * @author radler
 * Class Description ...
 */
public class Attribute implements Comparable<Attribute> {

    private String type;
    private String value;

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

    public String getValue() { return value; }
    public void setValue(String value) { this.value = value; }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "Attribute [type=" + type + ", value=" + value + "]";
    }

    @Override
    public int compareTo(Attribute that) {
        return ComparisonChain.start()
            .compare(this.type, that.type)
            .compare(this.value, that.value)
            .result();
    }

}

Answer 6

Starting from Steve's answer the ternary operator can be used:

public int compareTo(Person other) {
    int f = firstName.compareTo(other.firstName);
    int l = lastName.compareTo(other.lastName);
    return f != 0 ? f : l != 0 ? l : Integer.compare(age, other.age);
}