Java: convert List to a String

Question

JavaScript has Array.join()

js>[\"Bill\",\"Bob\",\"Steve\"].join(\" and \")
Bill and Bob and Steve

Does Java have anything

Answer 1

All the references to Apache Commons are fine (and that is what most people use) but I think the Guava equivalent, Joiner, has a much nicer API.

You can do the simple join case with

Joiner.on(" and ").join(names)

but also easily deal with nulls:

Joiner.on(" and ").skipNulls().join(names);

or

Joiner.on(" and ").useForNull("[unknown]").join(names);

and (useful enough as far as I'm concerned to use it in preference to commons-lang), the ability to deal with Maps:

Map<String, Integer> ages = .....;
String foo = Joiner.on(", ").withKeyValueSeparator(" is ").join(ages);
// Outputs:
// Bill is 25, Joe is 30, Betty is 35

which is extremely useful for debugging etc.

Answer 2

You can use this from Spring Framework's StringUtils. I know it's already been mentioned, but you can actually just take this code and it works immediately, without needing Spring for it.

// from https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-framework/blob/master/spring-core/src/main/java/org/springframework/util/StringUtils.java

/*
 * Copyright 2002-2017 the original author or authors.
 *
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
public class StringUtils {
    public static String collectionToDelimitedString(Collection<?> coll, String delim, String prefix, String suffix) {
        if(coll == null || coll.isEmpty()) {
            return "";
        }
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        Iterator<?> it = coll.iterator();
        while (it.hasNext()) {
            sb.append(prefix).append(it.next()).append(suffix);
            if (it.hasNext()) {
                sb.append(delim);
            }
        }
        return sb.toString();
    }
}

Answer 3

Try this:

java.util.Arrays.toString(anArray).replaceAll(", ", ",")
                .replaceFirst("^\\[","").replaceFirst("\\]$","");

Answer 4

If you're using Eclipse Collections (formerly GS Collections), you can use the makeString() method.

List<String> list = Arrays.asList("Bill", "Bob", "Steve");

String string = ListAdapter.adapt(list).makeString(" and ");

Assert.assertEquals("Bill and Bob and Steve", string);

If you can convert your List to an Eclipse Collections type, then you can get rid of the adapter.

MutableList<String> list = Lists.mutable.with("Bill", "Bob", "Steve");
String string = list.makeString(" and ");

If you just want a comma separated string, you can use the version of makeString() that takes no parameters.

Assert.assertEquals(
    "Bill, Bob, Steve", 
    Lists.mutable.with("Bill", "Bob", "Steve").makeString());

Note: I am a committer for Eclipse Collections.