I'm looking for a class in java that has key-value association, but without using hashes. Here is what I'm currently doing:
Hashtable
.Hashtable.entrySet()
.Map.Entry
for the iterator.Module
(a custom class) based on the value.The problem with this is that I do not have control over the order that I get the values back, so I cannot display the values in the a given order (without hard-coding the order).
I would use an ArrayList
or Vector
for this, but later in the code I need to grab the Module
object for a given Key, which I can't do with an ArrayList
or Vector
.
Does anyone know of a free/open-source Java class that will do this, or a way to get values out of a Hashtable
based on when they were added?
Thanks!
I suggest a LinkedHashMap
or a TreeMap
. A LinkedHashMap
keeps the keys in the order they were inserted, while a TreeMap
is kept sorted via a Comparator
or the natural Comparable
ordering of the keys.
Since it doesn't have to keep the elements sorted, LinkedHashMap
should be faster for most cases; TreeMap
has O(log n)
performance for containsKey
, get
, put
, and remove
, according to the Javadocs, while LinkedHashMap
is O(1)
for each.
If your API that only expects a predictable sort order, as opposed to a specific sort order, consider using the interfaces these two classes implement, NavigableMap
or SortedMap
. This will allow you not to leak specific implementations into your API and switch to either of those specific classes or a completely different implementation at will afterwards.