[java] Most efficient way to see if an ArrayList contains an object in Java

I have an ArrayList of objects in Java. The objects have four fields, two of which I'd use to consider the object equal to another. I'm looking for the most efficient way, given those two fields, to see if the array contains that object.

The wrench is that these classes are generated based on XSD objects, so I can't modify the classes themselves to overwrite the .equals.

Is there any better way than just looping through and manually comparing the two fields for each object and then breaking when found? That just seems so messy, looking for a better way.

Edit: the ArrayList comes from a SOAP response that is unmarshalled into objects.

There are three basic options:

1) If retrieval performance is paramount and it is practical to do so, use a form of hash table built once (and altered as/if the List changes).

2) If the List is conveniently sorted or it is practical to sort it and O(log n) retrieval is sufficient, sort and search.

3) If O(n) retrieval is fast enough or if it is impractical to manipulate/maintain the data structure or an alternate, iterate over the List.

Before writing code more complex than a simple iteration over the List, it is worth thinking through some questions.

• Why is something different needed? (Time) performance? Elegance? Maintainability? Reuse? All of these are okay reasons, apart or together, but they influence the solution.

• How much control do you have over the data structure in question? Can you influence how it is built? Managed later?

• What is the life cycle of the data structure (and underlying objects)? Is it built up all at once and never changed, or highly dynamic? Can your code monitor (or even alter) its life cycle?

• Are there other important constraints, such as memory footprint? Does information about duplicates matter? Etc.

Building a HashMap of these objects based on the field value as a key could be worthwhile from the performance perspective, e.g. populate Maps once and find objects very efficiently

If the list is sorted, you can use a binary search. If not, then there is no better way.

If you're doing this a lot, it would almost certainly be worth your while to sort the list the first time. Since you can't modify the classes, you would have to use a Comparator to do the sorting and searching.

Even if the equals method were comparing those two fields, then logically, it would be just the same code as you doing it manually. OK, it might be "messy", but it's still the correct answer

Is there any better way than just looping through and manually comparing the two fields for each object and then breaking when found? That just seems so messy, looking for a better way.

If your concern is maintainability you could do what Fabian Steeg suggest ( that's what I would do ) although it probably isn't the "most efficient" ( because you have to sort the array first and then perform the binary search ) but certainly the cleanest and better option.

If you're really concerned with efficiency, you can create a custom List implementation that uses the field in your object as the hash and use a HashMap as storage. But probably this would be too much.

Then you have to change the place where you fill the data from ArrayList to YourCustomList.

Like:

 List list = new ArrayList();

 fillFromSoap( list );

To:

 List list = new MyCustomSpecialList();

 fillFromSoap( list );

The implementation would be something like the following:

class MyCustomSpecialList extends AbstractList  { 
    private Map<Integer, YourObject> internalMap;

    public boolean add( YourObject o ) { 
         internalMap.put( o.getThatFieldYouKnow(), o );
    }

    public boolean contains( YourObject o ) { 
        return internalMap.containsKey( o.getThatFieldYouKnow() );
    }

}

Pretty much like a HashSet, the problem here is the HashSet relies on the good implementation of the hashCode method, which probably you don't have. Instead you use as the hash "that field you know" which is the one that makes one object equals to the other.

Of course implementing a List from the scratch lot more tricky than my snippet above, that's why I say the Fabian Steeg suggestion would be better and easier to implement ( although something like this would be more efficient )

Tell us what you did at the end.

Maybe a List isn't what you need.

Maybe a TreeSet would be a better container. You get O(log N) insertion and retrieval, and ordered iteration (but won't allow duplicates).

LinkedHashMap might be even better for your use case, check that out too.

If you need to search many time in the same list, it may pay off to build an index.

Iterate once through, and build a HashMap with the equals value you are looking for as the key and the appropriate node as the value. If you need all instead of anyone of a given equals value, then let the map have a value type of list and build the whole list in the initial iteration.

Please note that you should measure before doing this as the overhead of building the index may overshadow just traversing until the expected node is found.

Given your constraints, you're stuck with brute force search (or creating an index if the search will be repeated). Can you elaborate any on how the ArrayList is generated--perhaps there is some wiggle room there.

If all you're looking for is prettier code, consider using the Apache Commons Collections classes, in particular CollectionUtils.find(), for ready-made syntactic sugar:

ArrayList haystack = // ...
final Object needleField1 = // ...
final Object needleField2 = // ...

Object found = CollectionUtils.find(haystack, new Predicate() {
   public boolean evaluate(Object input) {
      return needleField1.equals(input.field1) && 
             needleField2.equals(input.field2);
   }
});

If you are a user of my ForEach DSL, it can be done with a Detect query.

Foo foo = ...
Detect<Foo> query = Detect.from(list);
for (Detect<Foo> each: query) 
    each.yield = each.element.a == foo.a && each.element.b == foo.b;
return query.result();

You could use a Comparator with Java's built-in methods for sorting and binary search. Suppose you have a class like this, where a and b are the fields you want to use for sorting:

class Thing { String a, b, c, d; }

You would define your Comparator:

Comparator<Thing> comparator = new Comparator<Thing>() {
  public int compare(Thing o1, Thing o2) {
    if (o1.a.equals(o2.a)) {
      return o1.b.compareTo(o2.b);
    }
    return o1.a.compareTo(o2.a);
  }
};

Then sort your list:

Collections.sort(list, comparator);

And finally do the binary search:

int i = Collections.binarySearch(list, thingToFind, comparator);

I would say the simplest solution would be to wrap the object and delegate the contains call to a collection of the wrapped class. This is similar to the comparator but doesn't force you to sort the resulting collection, you can simply use ArrayList.contains().

public class Widget {
        private String name;
        private String desc;

        public String getName() {
            return name;
        }

        public void setName(String name) {
            this.name = name;
        }

        public String getDesc() {
            return desc;
        }

        public void setDesc(String desc) {
            this.desc = desc;
        }
    }



    public abstract class EqualsHashcodeEnforcer<T> {

        protected T wrapped;

        public T getWrappedObject() {
            return wrapped;
        }

        @Override
        public boolean equals(Object obj) {
            return equalsDelegate(obj);
        }

        @Override
        public int hashCode() {
            return hashCodeDelegate();
        }

        protected abstract boolean equalsDelegate(Object obj);

        protected abstract int hashCodeDelegate();
    }


    public class WrappedWidget extends EqualsHashcodeEnforcer<Widget> {

        @Override
        protected boolean equalsDelegate(Object obj) {
            if (obj == null) {
                return false;
            }
            if (obj == getWrappedObject()) {
                return true;
            }
            if (obj.getClass() != getWrappedObject().getClass()) {
                return false;
            }
            Widget rhs = (Widget) obj;

            return new EqualsBuilder().append(getWrappedObject().getName(),
                    rhs.getName()).append(getWrappedObject().getDesc(),
                    rhs.getDesc()).isEquals();
        }

        @Override
        protected int hashCodeDelegate() {

            return new HashCodeBuilder(121, 991).append(
                    getWrappedObject().getName()).append(
                    getWrappedObject().getDesc()).toHashCode();
        }

    }