How to get all the distinct values by key inside stream java8

Question

I am currently learning a bit about streams. I have the following JSONArray, and I want to be able to retrieve all the distinct xvalues.

 datasets: {
    ds1         


        

Answer 1

What you get with .map(dataset -> dataset.getJSONArray("xvalues") (try-catch block omitted for sake of clarity) is a list itself and the subsequent call of distinct is used on the Stream<List<Object>> checking whether the lists itself with all its content is same to another and leave distinct lists.

You need to flat map the structure to Stream<Object> and then use the distinct to get the unique items. However, first, you need to convert JSONArray to List.

List<String> xvalues = arrayToStream(datasets)
    .map(JSONObject.class::cast)
    .map(dataset -> dataset -> {
         try { return dataset.getJSONArray("xvalues"); } 
         catch (JSONException ex) {}
         return;})
    .map(jsonArray -> toJsonArray(jsonArray ))         // convert it to List
    .flatMap(List::stream)                             // to Stream<Object>
    .distinct()
    .collect(Collectors.toList());

Answer 2

I believe using a json library(Jackson, Gson) is the best way to deal with json data. If you can use Jackson, this could be a solution

public class DataSetsWrapper {   
    private Map<String, XValue> datasets;
    //Getters, Setters
}

public class XValue {
    private List<String> xvalues;
    //Getters, Setters
}  



ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
DataSetsWrapper dataSetsWrapper = objectMapper.readValue(jsonString, DataSetsWrapper.class);

List<String> distinctXValues = dataSetsWrapper.getDatasets()
                .values()
                .stream()
                .map(XValue::getXvalues)
                .flatMap(Collection::stream)
                .distinct()
                .collect(Collectors.toList()); 

Replace jsonString with your json. I tested this with this json

String jsonString = "{\"datasets\": {\n" +
        "    \"ds1\": {\n" +
        "     \"xvalues\": [\n" +
        "        \"(empty)\",\n" +
        "        \"x1\",\n" +
        "        \"x2\"\n" +
        "      ]\n" +
        "    },\n" +
        "    \"ds2\": {\n" +
        "    \"xvalues\": [\n" +
        "        \"(empty)\",\n" +
        "        \"x1\",\n" +
        "        \"x2\",\n" +
        "        \"x3\"\n" +
        "      ]\n" +
        "    }\n" +
        "}}";