Jakarta Commons Cookbook

4.3. Reversing a Comparator

Problem

You need to reverse the effects of a Comparator. You need to return less than when this Comparator returns greater than, and greater than when it returns less than.

Solution

Use ReverseComparator to reverse the effects of a Comparator. Supply an existing Comparator to the constructor of ReverseComparator, and it reverses the effects of that Comparator. The following example demonstrates the use of ReverseComparator to reverse the result of a custom MyComparator instance:

Comparator myComparator = new MyComparator( );

Comparator reverseComparator = new ReverseComparator( myComparator );

Book book1 = new Book( );
Book book2 = new Book( );

int comparison = myComparator.compare( book1, book2 );
int reversedComparison = reverseComparator( book1, book2);

The value of reversedComparison is simply the negative of comparison; if MyComparator decides that book1 is less than book2, the ReverseComparator returns the opposite result—greater than. ReverseComparator simply wraps the original Comparator and multiplies the result by negative one.

Discussion

Example 4-1 is an implementation of a Comparator that is reversed using the ReverseComparator. This BookComparator compares two Book objects by the name and author bean properties. Sorting a list of books using this Comparator results in a list sorted alphabetically by book name and author name; if two books have the same name, they are sorted by author name.

Example 4-1. A Comparator that compares Book objects by name and author

package com.discursive.jccook.collections.compare;

import java.util.*;
import org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils;
import org.apache.commons.collections.comparators.ReverseComparator;

public class BookComparator implements Comparator {
    
    public int compare(Object o1, Object o2) {
         int comparison = -1;

        if( o1 instanceof Book && o2 instanceof Book ) {
            Book b1 = (Book) o1;
            Book b2 = (Book) o2;
        
             String b1Name = b1.getName( );
             String b2Name = b2.getName( );

             String b1Author = b1.getAuthor( );
             String b2Author = b2.getAuthor( );

            if( StringUtils.isNotEmpty( b1Name ) &&
                StringUtils.isNotEmpty( b2Name ) ) {
                comparison = b1Name.compareTo( b2Name );
            }

            if( comparison == 0 &&
                StringUtils.isNotEmpty( b1Author ) &&
                StringUtils.isNotEmpty( b2Author ) ) {
                comparison = b1Author.compareTo( b2Author );
            }   
        }
        return comparison;
    }
}

Example 4-2 sorts an array of Book objects in reverse order.

Example 4-2. Using ReverseComparator to sort Book objects

package com.discursive.jccook.collections.compare;

import java.util.*;
import org.apache.commons.collections.comparators.ReverseComparator;

public class ReverseExample {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        ReverseExample example = new ReverseExample( );
        example.start( );
    }
    
    public void start( ) throws Exception {

        // Create a Reversed BookComparator
                          Comparator bookCompare = new BookComparator( );
                          Comparator reverseComparator = new ReverseComparator( bookComparator );

        // Create a List of Book objects
        List books = new ArrayList( );

        Book book1 = new Book( );
        book1.setName( "TitleA" );
        book1.setAuthor( "John" );
        books.add( book1 );

        Book book2 = new Book( );
        book2.setName( "TitleB" );
        book2.setAuthor( "Donald" );
        books.add( book2 )

        Book book3 = new Book( );
        book3.setName( "TitleA" );
        book3.setAuthor( "Doug" );
        books.add( book3 );

        // Sort the List of Book objects with the Reversed BookComparator
                          Collections.sort( books, reverseComparator );

    }    
}

After Collections.sort( ), the books array is sorted in reverse alphabetical order by book name and author name: “TitleB by Donald” followed by “TitleA by John” followed by “TitleA by Doug.”

See Also

If you were using a simple Comparator to sort an array, you could sort and reverse the resulting array with Arrays.reverse( ), or you could reverse a List with Collections.reverse( ). Wrapping a Comparator in ReverseComparator may help you avoid the call to reverse( ), but the benefit is miniscule. ReverseComparator makes more sense when used in the context of a ChainedComparator; see Recipe 4.4 for more information about the ChainedComparator.

Note that use of StringUtils.isNotEmpty( ) is used in BookComparator to check if either of the bean properties are null or blank. This utility, is from StringUtils, and it is introduced in Recipe 2.2.