java - Collection to stream to a new collection

Question

I'm looking for the most pain free way to filter a collection. I'm thinking something like

Collection<?> foo = existingCollection.stream().filter( ... ). ...

But I'm not sure how is best to go from the filter, to returning or populating another collection. Most examples seem to be like "and here you can print". Possible there's a constructor, or output method that I'm missing.

Answer 1

There’s a reason why most examples avoid storing the result into a Collection. It’s not the recommended way of programming. You already have a Collection, the one providing the source data and collections are of no use on its own. You want to perform certain operations on it so the ideal case is to perform the operation using the stream and skip storing the data in an intermediate Collection. This is what most examples try to suggest.

Of course, there are a lot of existing APIs working with Collections and there always will be. So the Stream API offers different ways to handle the demand for a Collection.

• Get an unmodifiable List implementation containing all elements (JDK?16):

  List<T> results = l.stream().filter(…).toList();
  

• Get an arbitrary List implementation holding the result:

  List<T> results = l.stream().filter(…).collect(Collectors.toList());
  

• Get an unmodifiable List forbidding null like List.of(…) (JDK?10):

  List<T> results = l.stream().filter(…).collect(Collectors.toUnmodifiableList());
  

• Get an arbitrary Set implementation holding the result:

  Set<T> results = l.stream().filter(…).collect(Collectors.toSet());
  

• Get a specific Collection:

  ArrayList<T> results =
    l.stream().filter(…).collect(Collectors.toCollection(ArrayList::new));
  

• Add to an existing Collection:

  l.stream().filter(…).forEach(existing::add);
  

• Create an array:

  String[] array=l.stream().filter(…).toArray(String[]::new);
  

• Use the array to create a list with a specific specific behavior (mutable, fixed size):

  List<String> al=Arrays.asList(l.stream().filter(…).toArray(String[]::new));
  

• Allow a parallel capable stream to add to temporary local lists and join them afterward:

  List<T> results
    = l.stream().filter(…).collect(ArrayList::new, List::add, List::addAll);
  

  (Note: this is closely related to how Collectors.toList() is currently implemented, but that’s an implementation detail, i.e. there is no guarantee that future implementations of the toList() collectors will still return an ArrayList)