Generic Comparators in Java

By on September 21, 2006 in Programming

Are you using generics in Java? Are you trying to execute a Collections.sort method call and getting an “unchecked” warning from the compiler? This is something I just had to battle with, and here’s how you do it correctly.

First your Comparator needs to specify that it is of the type you will be comparing (in my case, JSF SelectItems), like so:

private static class CountryCodeComparator
        implements Comparator<SelectItem>;
{
  public int compare(SelectItem item1, SelectItem item2)
  {
    return item1.getLabel().compareTo(item2.getLabel());
  }
}

And then you have to make sure your List is of the necessary type when you create it:

List<SelectItem> countryCodeList = new ArrayList<SelectItem>;

Then you just make your Collections.sort call with no worries:

Collections.sort(countryCodeList, new CountryCodeComparator());

I found this resource which was very helpful in this regard.

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About Riyad Kalla

Software development, video games, writing, reading and anything shiny. I ultimately just want to provide a resource that helps people and if I can't do that, then at least make them laugh.
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14 Responses to “Generic Comparators in Java”

  1. Ben September 21, 2006 at 6:28 pm #

    Is it just me or does the whole syntax seem weird? Until 1.5 was there anything like this anywhere else in the language?

    Reply
    • Paras dhyani February 8, 2010 at 1:18 pm #

      Dear Ben,
      May be the use of the Generics give you some of the awkard syntax to implement but at the end it saves you from lot of trouble.
      Before JDK1.5 there was no sign of generics in java,but c++ implements use this as the name of template…

      Reply
  2. Riyad Kalla September 21, 2006 at 8:21 pm #

    This was a complaint a lot of people had and one reason I didn’t get into generics until about 3 months ago. After using them they make more sense and in about 4 occasions I have hit compile-time errors that I hadn’t noticed that would have been sucky runtime errors to track down. I think overall it’s a good thing. One of the bigger points of them was just to get more validation into the compiler-phase of the application. There is a ton of attention being paid to improving the overall stability of the language moving forward with stuff like this.

    I can’t say I love autoboxing, it makes things sloppy-easy in my experience, but for the few times where you do get to pass an int as an object or treat and Integer like an int, it’s pretty slick. I just feel wrong doing it, so I actively have Integer.valueOf(i) calls around my code when I need to convert.

    I’m sure I’ll drop that habit at some point.

    Reply
  3. HC February 5, 2008 at 4:38 am #

    fine information, was very helpful for me, indeed

    Reply
  4. Riyad Kalla February 5, 2008 at 8:14 am #

    HC, I’m glad it helped. I always run into issues when I get into Generics and have to go digging/Googling for answers.

    I’m happy to hear this helped you out.

    Reply
  5. Anu February 3, 2009 at 1:15 pm #

    Thank you very much. This was helpful.

    Reply
  6. Tee reg August 16, 2010 at 7:42 am #

    Thanks!

    Reply
  7. Maximilian January 11, 2011 at 9:44 am #

    This post is most welcome; thank you.

    Reply
  8. anon April 8, 2011 at 9:26 am #

    Thanks, that was just what I needed.

    Reply
  9. Cleiton Sousa May 27, 2011 at 2:04 pm #

    Thanks, that was just what i needed [2].

    Reply
  10. Arjen July 24, 2011 at 11:36 pm #

    Tnx! I’m pretty new with generics, and this makes sorting a lot easier!

    Reply

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