String
Operations with
Java Streams
Last modified: August 6, 2020
by baeldung
Java +
Java 8 Java Streams
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1. Overview
Java 8 has introduced a new Stream API
that lets us process data in a declarative
manner.
In this quick article, we would learn how to
use the Stream API to split a comma-
separated String into a list of Strings and
how to join a String array into a comma-
separated String.
We'll also look at how to convert a string
array to map using Stream API.
Nearly all of the time we face situations,
where we need to iterate some Java
Collections and filter the Collection based
on some filtering logic. In a traditional
approach for this type of situation, we
would use lots of loops and if-else
operations to get the desired result.
If you want to read more about the Stream
API, check this article.
2. Joining Strings With the
Stream API
Let's use the Stream API to create a
function which would join a String array into
a comma-separated String:
public static String join
join(String[]
arrayOfString){
return
Arrays.asList(arrayOfString)
.stream()
//.map(...)
.collect(Collectors.joining(","));
}
Points to note here:
The stream() function converts any
Collection into a stream of data
map() function is used to process the
data
There is also another function, named
filter(), where we can include filtering
criteria
There can be scenarios, where we may
want to join a String with some fixed prefix
and postfix. With the Stream API we can do
that in the following way:
public static String
joinWithPrefixPostfix
joinWithPrefixPostfix(String[]
arrayOfString){
return
Arrays.asList(arrayOfString)
.stream()
//.map(...)
.collect(Collectors.joining(",","
[","]"));
}
As we can see in the Collectors.joining()
method, we are declaring our prefix as ‘[‘
and postfix as ‘]'; hence the generated
String will be created with declared […..]
format.
3. Splitting Strings With
Stream API
Now, let's create a function, which would
split a comma separated String into a list of
String using Stream API:
public static List<String>
split
split(String str){
return Stream.of(str.split(","))
.map (elem -> new String
String(elem))
.collect(Collectors.toList());
}
It's also possible to directly convert a String
to a Character list using the Stream API:
public static List<Character>
splitToListOfChar
splitToListOfChar(String str) {
return str.chars()
.mapToObj(item -> (char
char) item)
.collect(Collectors.toList());
}
One interesting fact to note here is that the
chars() method converts the String into a
stream of Integer where each Integer value
denotes the ASCII value of each and every
Char sequence. That's why we need to
explicitly typecast the mapper object in the
mapToObj() method.
4. String Array to Map
With Stream API
We can also convert a String array to map
using split and Collectors.toMap, provided
each item in the array contains a key-value
entity concatenated by a separator:
public static Map<String, String>
arrayToMap
arrayToMap(String[] arrayOfString) {
return
Arrays.asList(arrayOfString)
.stream()
.map(str -> str.split(":"))
.collect(toMap(str -> str[0],
str -> str[1]));
}
Here, “:” is the key-value separator for all
the elements in String array.
Please remember that in order to avoid
compilation error, we need to ensure that
code is compiled using Java 1.8. To do this,
we need to add the following plugin in
the pom.xml:
<build
build>
<plugins
plugins>
<plugin
plugin>
<groupId
groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</gro
gro
upId
upId>
<artifactId
artifactId>maven-compiler-
plugin</artifactId
artifactId>
<version
version>3.3</version
version>
<configuration
configuration>
<source
source>1.8</source
source>
<target
target>1.8</target
target>
</configuration
configuration>
</plugin
plugin>
</plugins
plugins>
</build
build>
5. Testing
Since we are done creating the functions,
let's create test cases to verify the
outcome.
First, let's test our simple joining method:
@Test
public void
givenArray_transformedToStream_conv
ertToString
ertToString() {
String[] programmingLanguages =
{"java", "python", "nodejs", "ruby"};
String expectation =
"java,python,nodejs,ruby";
String result =
JoinerSplitter.join(programmingLanguage
s);
assertEquals(result, expectation);
}
Next, let's create another one to test our
simple splitting functionality:
@Test
public void
givenString_transformedToStream_con
vertToList
vertToList() {
String programmingLanguages =
"java,python,nodejs,ruby";
List<String> expectation = new
ArrayList
ArrayList<>();
expectation.add("java");
expectation.add("python");
expectation.add("nodejs");
expectation.add("ruby");
List<String> result =
JoinerSplitter.split(programmingLanguag
es);
assertEquals(result, expectation);
}
Finally, let's test our String array to map
functionality:
@Test
public void
givenStringArray_transformedToStrea
m_convertToMap
m_convertToMap() {
String[] programming_languages =
new String
String[]
{"language:java","os:linux","editor:ema
cs"};
Map<String,String> expectation=new
new
HashMap
HashMap<>();
expectation.put("language",
"java");
expectation.put("os", "linux");
expectation.put("editor", "emacs");
Map<String, String> result =
JoinerSplitter.arrayToMap(programming_l
anguages);
assertEquals(result, expectation);
In the same way, we need to create the rest
of the test cases.
6. Conclusion
Stream API provides us with sophisticated
data processing techniques. This new way
of writing code is very e"cient in terms of
heap memory management in a multi-
threaded environment.
Like always, the full source code is
available over on Github.
Get started with Spring 5
and Spring Boot 2,
through the Learn Spring
course:
>> CHECK OUT THE COURSE
Learning to build your
API
with Spring?
Download the E-book
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