How do I use Comparator to define a custom sort order?

Question

I want to develop a sorting demo for car list. I am using data table to display car list. Now actually I want to sort the list by car color. Here it is not sort by alphabeti

Answer 1

In Java 8 you can do something like this:

You first need an Enum:

public enum Color {
    BLUE, YELLOW, RED
}

Car class:

public class Car {

    Color color;

    ....

    public Color getColor() {
        return color;
    }

    public void setColor(Color color) {
        this.color = color;
    }
}

And then, using your car list, you can simply do:

Collections.sort(carList, Comparator:comparing(CarSort::getColor));

Answer 2

I had to do something similar to Sean and ilalex's answer.
But I had too many options to explicitly define the sort order for and only needed to float certain entries to the front of the list ... in the specified (non-natural) order.
Hopefully this is helpful to someone else.

public class CarComparator implements Comparator<Car> {

    //sort these items in this order to the front of the list 
    private static List<String> ORDER = Arrays.asList("dd", "aa", "cc", "bb");

    public int compare(final Car o1, final Car o2) {
        int result = 0;
        int o1Index = ORDER.indexOf(o1.getName());
        int o2Index = ORDER.indexOf(o2.getName());
        //if neither are found in the order list, then do natural sort
        //if only one is found in the order list, float it above the other
        //if both are found in the order list, then do the index compare
        if (o1Index < 0 && o2Index < 0) result = o1.getName().compareTo(o2.getName());
        else if (o1Index < 0) result = 1;
        else if (o2Index < 0) result = -1;
        else result = o1Index - o2Index;
        return result;
    }

//Testing output: dd,aa,aa,cc,bb,bb,bb,a,aaa,ac,ac,ba,bd,ca,cb,cb,cd,da,db,dc,zz
}

Answer 3

Using just simple loops:

public static void compareSortOrder (List<String> sortOrder, List<String> listToCompare){
        int currentSortingLevel = 0;
        for (int i=0; i<listToCompare.size(); i++){
            System.out.println("Item from list: " + listToCompare.get(i));
            System.out.println("Sorting level: " + sortOrder.get(currentSortingLevel));
            if (listToCompare.get(i).equals(sortOrder.get(currentSortingLevel))){

            } else {
                try{
                    while (!listToCompare.get(i).equals(sortOrder.get(currentSortingLevel)))
                        currentSortingLevel++;
                    System.out.println("Changing sorting level to next value: " + sortOrder.get(currentSortingLevel));
                } catch (ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException e){

                }

            }
        }
    }

And sort order in List

public static List<String> ALARMS_LIST = Arrays.asList(
            "CRITICAL",
            "MAJOR",
            "MINOR",
            "WARNING",
            "GOOD",
            "N/A");