How to sort Map values by key in Java?

Question

I have a Map that has strings for both keys and values.

Data is like following:

\"question1\", \"1\"
\"question9\", \"1\"
\"que

Answer 1

Provided you cannot use TreeMap, in Java 8 we can make use of toMap() method in Collectorswhich takes following parameters:

• keymapper: mapping function to produce keys
• valuemapper: mapping function to produce values
• mergeFunction: a merge function, used to resolve collisions between values associated with the same key
• mapSupplier: a function which returns a new, empty Map into which the results will be inserted.

Java 8 Example

Map<String,String> sample = new HashMap<>();  // push some values to map  
Map<String, String> newMapSortedByKey = sample.entrySet().stream()
                    .sorted(Map.Entry.<String,String>comparingByKey().reversed())
                    .collect(Collectors.toMap(Map.Entry::getKey, Map.Entry::getValue, (e1, e2) -> e1, LinkedHashMap::new));
Map<String, String> newMapSortedByValue = sample.entrySet().stream()
                        .sorted(Map.Entry.<String,String>comparingByValue().reversed())
                        .collect(Collectors.toMap(Map.Entry::getKey, Map.Entry::getValue, (e1,e2) -> e1, LinkedHashMap::new));

We can modify the example to use custom comparator and to sort based on keys as:

Map<String, String> newMapSortedByKey = sample.entrySet().stream()
                .sorted((e1,e2) -> e1.getKey().compareTo(e2.getKey()))
                .collect(Collectors.toMap(Map.Entry::getKey, Map.Entry::getValue, (e1,e2) -> e1, LinkedHashMap::new));

Answer 2

Just use TreeMap

new TreeMap<String, String>(unsortMap);

Be aware that the TreeMap is sorted according to the natural ordering of its 'keys'

Answer 3

If you already have a map and would like to sort it on keys, simply use :

Map<String, String> treeMap = new TreeMap<String, String>(yourMap);

A complete working example :

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Set;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.TreeMap;
import java.util.Iterator;

class SortOnKey {

public static void main(String[] args) {
   HashMap<String,String> hm = new HashMap<String,String>();
   hm.put("3","three");
   hm.put("1","one");
   hm.put("4","four");
   hm.put("2","two");
   printMap(hm);
   Map<String, String> treeMap = new TreeMap<String, String>(hm);
   printMap(treeMap);
}//main

public static void printMap(Map<String,String> map) {
    Set s = map.entrySet();
    Iterator it = s.iterator();
    while ( it.hasNext() ) {
       Map.Entry entry = (Map.Entry) it.next();
       String key = (String) entry.getKey();
       String value = (String) entry.getValue();
       System.out.println(key + " => " + value);
    }//while
    System.out.println("========================");
}//printMap

}//class