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Stream in Java

2019-10-08 23:59 Posted in Learn with Java

Introduced in Java 8, the Stream API is used to process collections of objects. A stream is a sequence of objects that supports various methods which can be pipelined to produce the desired result. The features of Java stream are –

  • A stream is not a data structure instead it takes input from the Collections, Arrays or I/O channels.
  • Streams don’t change the original data structure, they only provide the result as per the pipelined methods.
  • Each intermediate operation is lazily executed and returns a stream as a result, hence various intermediate operations can be pipelined. Terminal operations mark the end of the stream and return the result.

Different Operations On Streams Intermediate Operations:

  • map: The map method is used to map the items in the collection to other objects according to the Function passed as argument.
  • filter: The filter method is used to select elements as per the Predicate passed as argument.
  • sorted: The sorted method is used to sort the stream.

Terminal Operations:

  • collect: The collect method is used to return the result of the intermediate operations performed on the stream.
  • forEach: The forEach method is used to iterate through every element of the stream.
  • reduce: The reduce method is used to reduce the elements of a stream to a single value. The reduce method takes a BinaryOperator as a parameter.

Program to demonstrate the use of Stream

//a simple program to demonstrate the use of stream in java
import java.util.*;
import java.util.stream.*;

class Demo {
  public static void main(String args[]) {

    // create a list of integers
    List<Integer> number = Arrays.asList(2,3,4,5);

    // demonstration of map method
    List<Integer> square = number.stream().map(x -> x*x).
                           collect(Collectors.toList());
    System.out.println(square);

    // create a list of String
    List<String> names =
                Arrays.asList("Reflection","Collection","Stream");

    // demonstration of filter method
    List<String> result = names.stream().filter(s->s.startsWith("S")).
                          collect(Collectors.toList());
    System.out.println(result);

    // demonstration of sorted method
    List<String> show =
            names.stream().sorted().collect(Collectors.toList());
    System.out.println(show);

    // create a list of integers
    List<Integer> numbers = Arrays.asList(2,3,4,5,2);

    // collect method returns a set
    Set<Integer> squareSet =
         numbers.stream().map(x->x*x).collect(Collectors.toSet());
    System.out.println(squareSet);

    // demonstration of forEach method
    number.stream().map(x->x*x).forEach(y->System.out.println(y));

    // demonstration of reduce method
    int even =
       number.stream().filter(x->x%2==0).reduce(0,(ans,i)-> ans+i);

    System.out.println(even);
  }
}
Output:

[4, 9, 16, 25]
[Stream]
[Collection, Reflection, Stream]
[16, 4, 9, 25]
4
9
16
25
6

Important Points/Observations:

  • A stream consists of source followed by zero or more intermediate methods combined together (pipelined) and a terminal method to process the objects obtained from the source as per the methods described.
  • Stream is used to compute elements as per the pipelined methods without altering the original value of the object.