Sort objects in ArrayList by date?

Question

Every example I find is about doing this alphabetically, while I need my elements sorted by date.

My ArrayList contains objects on which one of the datamembers is a

Answer 1

Given MyObject that has a DateTime member with a getDateTime() method, you can sort an ArrayList that contains MyObject elements by the DateTime objects like this:

Collections.sort(myList, new Comparator<MyObject>() {
    public int compare(MyObject o1, MyObject o2) {
        return o1.getDateTime().lt(o2.getDateTime()) ? -1 : 1;
    }
});

Answer 2

With introduction of Java 1.8, streams are very useful in solving this kind of problems:

Comparator <DateTime> myComparator = (arg1, arg2) 
                -> {
                    if(arg1.lt(arg2)) 
                       return -1;
                    else if (arg1.lteq(arg2))
                       return 0;
                    else
                       return 1;
                   };

ArrayList<DateTime> sortedList = myList
                   .stream()
                   .sorted(myComparator)
                   .collect(Collectors.toCollection(ArrayList::new));

Answer 3

You can make your object comparable:

public static class MyObject implements Comparable<MyObject> {

  private Date dateTime;

  public Date getDateTime() {
    return dateTime;
  }

  public void setDateTime(Date datetime) {
    this.dateTime = datetime;
  }

  @Override
  public int compareTo(MyObject o) {
    return getDateTime().compareTo(o.getDateTime());
  }
}

And then you sort it by calling:

Collections.sort(myList);

However sometimes you don't want to change your model, like when you want to sort on several different properties. In that case, you can create comparator on the fly:

Collections.sort(myList, new Comparator<MyObject>() {
  public int compare(MyObject o1, MyObject o2) {
      return o1.getDateTime().compareTo(o2.getDateTime());
  }
});

However, the above works only if you're certain that dateTime is not null at the time of comparison. It's wise to handle null as well to avoid NullPointerExceptions:

public static class MyObject implements Comparable<MyObject> {

  private Date dateTime;

  public Date getDateTime() {
    return dateTime;
  }

  public void setDateTime(Date datetime) {
    this.dateTime = datetime;
  }

  @Override
  public int compareTo(MyObject o) {
    if (getDateTime() == null || o.getDateTime() == null)
      return 0;
    return getDateTime().compareTo(o.getDateTime());
  }
}

Or in the second example:

Collections.sort(myList, new Comparator<MyObject>() {
  public int compare(MyObject o1, MyObject o2) {
      if (o1.getDateTime() == null || o2.getDateTime() == null)
        return 0;
      return o1.getDateTime().compareTo(o2.getDateTime());
  }
});

Answer 4

You can use Collections.sort method. It's a static method. You pass it the list and a comparator. It uses a modified mergesort algorithm over the list. That's why you must pass it a comparator to do the pair comparisons.

Collections.sort(myList, new Comparator<MyObject> {
   public int compare(MyObject o1, MyObject o2) {
      DateTime a = o1.getDateTime();
      DateTime b = o2.getDateTime();
      if (a.lt(b)) 
        return -1;
      else if (a.lteq(b)) // it's equals
         return 0;
      else
         return 1;
   }
});

Note that if myList is of a comparable type (one that implements Comparable interface) (like Date, Integer or String) you can omit the comparator and the natural ordering will be used.

Answer 5

Future viewers, I think this is the simplest solution, if your model contains a string type date ("2020-01-01 10:00:00" for example), then just write the following line to sort the data by date descending from newest to the oldest:

Collections.sort(messages, (o1, o2) -> o2.getMessageDate().compareTo(o1.getMessageDate()));

Answer 6

All the answers here I found to be un-neccesarily complex for a simple problem (at least to an experienced java developer, which I am not). I had a similar problem and chanced upon this (and other) solutions, and though they provided a pointer, for a beginner I found as stated above. My solution, depends on where in the the Object your Date is, in this case, the date is the first element of the Object[] where dataVector is the ArrayList containing your Objects.

Collections.sort(dataVector, new Comparator<Object[]>() {
    public int compare(Object[] o1, Object[] o2) {
        return ((Date)o1[0]).compareTo(((Date)o2[0]));
    }
});