How to directly initialize a HashMap (in a literal way)?

Question

Is there some way of initializing a Java HashMap like this?:

Map test = 
    new HashMap{\"test\":\"test\",\"test\         


        

Answer 1

You can create a method to initialize the map like in this example below:

Map<String, Integer> initializeMap()
{
  Map<String, Integer> ret = new HashMap<>();

  //populate ret
  ...

  return ret;
}

//call
Map<String, Integer> map = initializeMap();

Answer 2

There is no direct way to do this - Java has no Map literals (yet - I think they were proposed for Java 8).

Some people like this:

Map<String,String> test = new HashMap<String, String>(){{
       put("test","test"); put("test","test");}};

This creates an anonymous subclass of HashMap, whose instance initializer puts these values. (By the way, a map can't contain twice the same value, your second put will overwrite the first one. I'll use different values for the next examples.)

The normal way would be this (for a local variable):

Map<String,String> test = new HashMap<String, String>();
test.put("test","test");
test.put("test1","test2");

If your test map is an instance variable, put the initialization in a constructor or instance initializer:

Map<String,String> test = new HashMap<String, String>();
{
    test.put("test","test");
    test.put("test1","test2");
}

If your test map is a class variable, put the initialization in a static initializer:

static Map<String,String> test = new HashMap<String, String>();
static {
    test.put("test","test");
    test.put("test1","test2");
}

If you want your map to never change, you should after the initialization wrap your map by Collections.unmodifiableMap(...). You can do this in a static initializer too:

static Map<String,String> test;
{
    Map<String,String> temp = new HashMap<String, String>();
    temp.put("test","test");
    temp.put("test1","test2");
    test = Collections.unmodifiableMap(temp);
}

(I'm not sure if you can now make test final ... try it out and report here.)

Answer 3

JAVA 8

In plain java 8 you also have the possibility of using Streams/Collectors to do the job.

Map<String, String> myMap = Stream.of(
         new SimpleEntry<>("key1", "value1"),
         new SimpleEntry<>("key2", "value2"),
         new SimpleEntry<>("key3", "value3"))
        .collect(toMap(SimpleEntry::getKey, SimpleEntry::getValue));

This has the advantage of not creating an Anonymous class.

Note that the imports are:

import static java.util.stream.Collectors.toMap;
import java.util.AbstractMap.SimpleEntry;

Of course, as noted in other answers, in java 9 onwards you have simpler ways of doing the same.

Answer 4

An alternative, using plain Java 7 classes and varargs: create a class HashMapBuilder with this method:

public static HashMap<String, String> build(String... data){
    HashMap<String, String> result = new HashMap<String, String>();

    if(data.length % 2 != 0) 
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Odd number of arguments");      

    String key = null;
    Integer step = -1;

    for(String value : data){
        step++;
        switch(step % 2){
        case 0: 
            if(value == null)
                throw new IllegalArgumentException("Null key value"); 
            key = value;
            continue;
        case 1:             
            result.put(key, value);
            break;
        }
    }

    return result;
}

Use the method like this:

HashMap<String,String> data = HashMapBuilder.build("key1","value1","key2","value2");

Answer 5

If you need to place only one key-value pair, you can use Collections.singletonMap(key, value);

Answer 6

Map<String,String> test = new HashMap<String, String>()
{
    {
        put(key1, value1);
        put(key2, value2);
    }
};