What's the best way to build a string of delimited items in Java?

Question

While working in a Java app, I recently needed to assemble a comma-delimited list of values to pass to another web service without knowing how many elements there would be i

Answer 1

In Java 8 you can use String.join():

List<String> list = Arrays.asList("foo", "bar", "baz");
String joined = String.join(" and ", list); // "foo and bar and baz"

Also have a look at this answer for a Stream API example.

Answer 2

Java 8

stringCollection.stream().collect(Collectors.joining(", "));

Answer 3

//Note: if you have access to Java5+, 
//use StringBuilder in preference to StringBuffer.  
//All that has to be replaced is the class name.  
//StringBuffer will work in Java 1.4, though.

appendWithDelimiter( StringBuffer buffer, String addition, 
    String delimiter ) {
    if ( buffer.length() == 0) {
        buffer.append(addition);
    } else {
        buffer.append(delimiter);
        buffer.append(addition);
    }
}


StringBuffer parameterBuffer = new StringBuffer();
if ( condition ) { 
    appendWithDelimiter(parameterBuffer, "elementName", "," );
}
if ( anotherCondition ) {
    appendWithDelimiter(parameterBuffer, "anotherElementName", "," );
}

//Finally, to return a string representation, call toString() when returning.
return parameterBuffer.toString(); 

Answer 4

And a minimal one (if you don't want to include Apache Commons or Gauva into project dependencies just for the sake of joining strings)

/**
 *
 * @param delim : String that should be kept in between the parts
 * @param parts : parts that needs to be joined
 * @return  a String that's formed by joining the parts
 */
private static final String join(String delim, String... parts) {
    StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
    for (int i = 0; i < parts.length - 1; i++) {
        builder.append(parts[i]).append(delim);
    }
    if(parts.length > 0){
        builder.append(parts[parts.length - 1]);
    }
    return builder.toString();
}

Answer 5

Your approach is not too bad, but you should use a StringBuffer instead of using the + sign. The + has the big disadvantage that a new String instance is being created for each single operation. The longer your string gets, the bigger the overhead. So using a StringBuffer should be the fastest way:

public StringBuffer appendWithDelimiter( StringBuffer original, String addition, String delimiter ) {
        if ( original == null ) {
                StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();
                buffer.append(addition);
                return buffer;
        } else {
                buffer.append(delimiter);
                buffer.append(addition);
                return original;
        }
}

After you have finished creating your string simply call toString() on the returned StringBuffer.

Answer 6

The Google's Guava library has com.google.common.base.Joiner class which helps to solve such tasks.

Samples:

"My pets are: " + Joiner.on(", ").join(Arrays.asList("rabbit", "parrot", "dog")); 
// returns "My pets are: rabbit, parrot, dog"

Joiner.on(" AND ").join(Arrays.asList("field1=1" , "field2=2", "field3=3"));
// returns "field1=1 AND field2=2 AND field3=3"

Joiner.on(",").skipNulls().join(Arrays.asList("London", "Moscow", null, "New York", null, "Paris"));
// returns "London,Moscow,New York,Paris"

Joiner.on(", ").useForNull("Team held a draw").join(Arrays.asList("FC Barcelona", "FC Bayern", null, null, "Chelsea FC", "AC Milan"));
// returns "FC Barcelona, FC Bayern, Team held a draw, Team held a draw, Chelsea FC, AC Milan"

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Here is an article about Guava's string utilities.