Grouping elements of a list into sublists (maybe by using guava)

Question

I want to group elements of a list. I'm currently doing it this way:

public static <E> List<List<E>> group(final List<E> list, final GroupFunction<E> groupFunction) {

    List<List<E>> result = Lists.newArrayList();

    for (final E element : list) {

        boolean groupFound = false;
        for (final List<E> group : result) {
            if (groupFunction.sameGroup(element, group.get(0))) {
                group.add(element);
                groupFound = true;
                break;
            }
        }
        if (! groupFound) {

            List<E> newGroup = Lists.newArrayList();
            newGroup.add(element);
            result.add(newGroup);
        }
    }

    return result;
}

public interface GroupFunction<E> {
    public boolean sameGroup(final E element1, final E element2);
}

Is there a better way to do this, preferably by using guava?

Solution 1

Sure it is possible, and even easier with Guava :) Use Multimaps.index(Iterable, Function):

ImmutableListMultimap<E, E> indexed = Multimaps.index(list, groupFunction);

If you give concrete use case it would be easier to show it in action.

Example from docs:

List<String> badGuys =
   Arrays.asList("Inky", "Blinky", "Pinky", "Pinky", "Clyde");
Function<String, Integer> stringLengthFunction = ...;
Multimap<Integer, String> index =
   Multimaps.index(badGuys, stringLengthFunction);
System.out.println(index);

prints

{4=[Inky], 6=[Blinky], 5=[Pinky, Pinky, Clyde]}

In your case if GroupFunction is defined as:

GroupFunction<String> groupFunction = new GroupFunction<String>() {
  @Override public String sameGroup(final String s1, final String s2) {
    return s1.length().equals(s2.length());
  }
}

then it would translate to:

Function<String, Integer> stringLengthFunction = new Function<String, Integer>() {
  @Override public Integer apply(final String s) {
    return s.length();
  }
}

which is possible stringLengthFunction implementation used in Guava's example.

---

Finally, in Java 8, whole snippet could be even simpler, as lambas and method references are concise enough to be inlined:

ImmutableListMultimap<E, E> indexed = Multimaps.index(list, String::length);

For pure Java 8 (no Guava) example using Collector.groupingBy see Jeffrey Bosboom's answer, although there are few differences in that approach:

• it doesn't return ImmutableListMultimap but rather Map with Collection values,

• There are no guarantees on the type, mutability, serializability, or thread-safety of the Map returned (source),

• it's a bit more verbose than Guava + method reference.

---

EDIT: If you don't care about indexed keys you can fetch grouped values:

List<List<E>> grouped = Lists.transform(indexed.keySet().asList(), new Function<E, List<E>>() {
        @Override public List<E> apply(E key) {
            return indexed.get(key);
        }
});

// or the same view, but with Java 8 lambdas:
List<List<E>> grouped = Lists.transform(indexed.keySet().asList(), indexed::get);

what gives you Lists<List<E>> view which contents can be easily copied to ArrayList or just used as is, as you wanted in first place. Also note that indexed.get(key) is ImmutableList.

// bonus: similar as above, but not a view, instead collecting to list using streams:
List<List<E>> grouped = indexed.keySet().stream()
    .map(indexed::get)
    .collect(Collectors.toList());

EDIT 2: As Petr Gladkikh mentions in comment below, if Collection<List<E>> is enough, above example could be simpler:

Collection<List<E>> grouped = indexed.asMap().values();

Solution 2

Collector.groupingBy from the Java 8 streams library provides the same functionality as Guava's Multimaps.index. Here's the example in Xaerxess's answer, rewritten to use Java 8 streams:

List<String> badGuys = Arrays.asList("Inky", "Blinky", "Pinky", "Pinky", "Clyde");
Map<Integer, List<String>> index = badGuys.stream()
    .collect(Collectors.groupingBy(String::length));
System.out.println(index);

This will print

{4=[Inky], 5=[Pinky, Pinky, Clyde], 6=[Blinky]}

If you want to combine the values with the same key in some other way than creating a list, you can use the overload of groupingBy that takes another collector. This example concatenates the strings with a delimiter:

Map<Integer, String> index = badGuys.stream()
    .collect(Collectors.groupingBy(String::length, Collectors.joining(" and ")));

This will print

{4=Inky, 5=Pinky and Pinky and Clyde, 6=Blinky}

If you have a large list or your grouping function is expensive, you can go parallel using parallelStream and a concurrent collector.

Map<Integer, List<String>> index = badGuys.parallelStream()
    .collect(Collectors.groupingByConcurrent(String::length));

This may print (the order is no longer deterministic)

{4=[Inky], 5=[Pinky, Clyde, Pinky], 6=[Blinky]}

Solution 3

The easiest and simplest way would be using: Lamdaj grouping feature

The above example can be re-written:

List<String> badGuys = Arrays.asList("Inky", "Blinky", "Pinky", "Pinky", "Clyde");
Group group = group(badGuys, by(on(String.class).length)));
System.out.println(group.keySet());

Solution 4

With Java 8, Guava and few helper functions you can implement grouping with custom Comparator

public static <T> Map<T, List<T>> group(List<T> items, Comparator<T> comparator)
{
    ListMultimap<T, T> blocks = LinkedListMultimap.create();

    if (!ArrayUtils.isNullOrEmpty(items))
    {
        T currentItem = null;

        for (T item : items)
        {
            if (currentItem == null || comparator.compare(currentItem, item) != 0)
            {
                currentItem = item;
            }

            blocks.put(currentItem, ObjectUtils.clone(item));
        }
    }

    return Multimaps.asMap(blocks);
}

Example

Comparator<SportExercise> comparator = Comparator.comparingInt(SportExercise::getEstimatedTime)
                .thenComparingInt(SportExercise::getActiveTime).thenComparingInt(SportExercise::getIntervalCount)
                .thenComparingLong(SportExercise::getExerciseId);

Map<SportExercise, List<SportExercise>> blocks = group(sportWorkout.getTrainingExercises(), comparator);

blocks.forEach((key, values) -> {
            System.out.println(key);
            System.out.println(values);
        });

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