Difference between final, finally and finalize in Java ?


final – final keyword can be used with a class, variable or a method.

  • A variable declared as final acts as constant, which means one a variable is declared and assigned , the value cannot be changed. An object can also be final, which means that the once the object is created it cannot be assigned a different object, although the properties or fields of the object can be changed.
  • A final class is immutable, which means that no other class can extend from it. E.g String, Integer.
  • A final method in a class cannot be overridden in the child class.

The underlying behavior of using final keyword is to act as constant.

public class Test {
    private static final String PREFIX = "test." 
    private final MyClass obj = new Myclass();

    publc Test() {
      obj = new MyClass() ;// throws error 
    }
  }
  public class Test {
    private static final String PREFIX = "test." 
    private final MyClass obj;

    publc Test() {
      obj = new MyClass() ;// this works
    }
  }

finally – finally keyword is used with try-catch block for handling exception. The finally block is optional in try-catch block. The finally code block is always executed after try or catch block is completed. The general use case for finally block is close the resources used in try block. For e.g. Closing a FileStream, I/O stream objects, Database connections, HTTP connections are generally closed in a finally block.

public class Test {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    BufferedReader br = null;
    try {
      String sCurrentLine = "";
      br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("C:\\testing.txt"));
      while ((sCurrentLine = br.readLine()) != null) {
        System.out.println(sCurrentLine);
      }
    } catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    } finally { // close the resource. 
      try {
        if (br != null)br.close();
      } catch (IOException ex) {
        ex.printStackTrace();
      }
    }
  }
}

finalize() – This is the method of Object class.It is invoked before an object is discarded by the garbage collector, allowing it to clean up its state. Should not be used to release non-memory resources like file handles, sockets, database connections etc because Java has only a finite number of these resources and you do not know when the garbage collection is going to kick in to release these non-memory resources through the finalize() method.

Convert JSON to Map or Map to Json in Java


One of the common uses cases while working with json is to convert it to a java object or convert java object to json. There is an open source library available in java which helps in processing json objects.

Add the Jackson dependency in pom.xml file

<repositories>
	<repository>
		<id>codehaus</id>
		<url>http://repository.codehaus.org/org/codehaus</url>
	</repository>
  </repositories>

  <dependencies>
	<dependency>
		<groupId>org.codehaus.jackson</groupId>
		<artifactId>jackson-mapper-asl</artifactId>
		<version>1.9.12</version>
	</dependency>
  </dependencies>

The Java class :

public static void main(String args[]) {
        ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
        Map m = new HashMap();
        Map personMap = new HashMap<>();
        Map personDetail = new HashMap();
        personDetail.put("firstname", "Bob");
        personDetail.put("lastname", "jackson");
        personDetail.put("age", "12");
        personDetail.put("city", "Berlin");

        personMap.put("person", personDetail);
        //convert Map to json string
        try {
            System.out.println(mapper.writeValueAsString(personMap));
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        // convert json to Map
        String json = "{\"person\":{\"age\":\"12\",\"lastname\":\"jackson\""
                + ",\"firstname\":\"Bob\",\"city\":\"Berlin\"}}"
        try {
            Map map = mapper.readValue(json, Map.class);
            System.out.println("Map is " + map);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
 }

Output is

Output: {“person”:{“age”:”12″,”lastname”:”jackson”,”firstname”:”Bob”,”city”:”Berlin”}}

Map is {person={age=12, lastname=jackson, firstname=Bob, city=Berlin}}

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();

Creating an object of ObjectMapper is a expensive operation and as best practice it should be created as a singleton object in a class.

Create custom hashmap in Java


One of the common interview question, is to build own CustomHashMap. Following code sample demonstrate generic map with put(), get() and remove() operations.

/**
 * The CustomHashMap uses an array of KeyValuePair.
 * KeyValuePair class  where K is the key and V value and  next is the element appended to it. The KeyValuePair acts 
 * as a list
 * 
 *  MapList is used to store elements. the getHash() method is used to find the index of the array. 
 * 
 * @param <K>
 * @param <V>
 */
public class CustomHashMap<K, V> {

	KeyValuePair<K, V> mapList[] = new KeyValuePair[100];

	public V get(K key) {
		int index = getHash(key);
		KeyValuePair<K,V> list = mapList[index];
		return getMatchValue(list, key);
	}

	public void put(K key, V value) {
		int index = getHash(key);
		storeValue(index, key, value);
	}
	
	public void remove(K key) {
		int index = getHash(key);
		KeyValuePair<K,V> list = mapList[index];
		if (list == null)
			return;
		// if only one element is present in the list ,set the index to null
		if(list.getKey().equals(key)){
			if (list.next == null){
				mapList[index] = null;
				return;
			}
		}
		KeyValuePair<K,V> prev = null;
		do{
			if(list.key.equals(key)){
				if (prev == null){
					list = list.getNext();
				}else{
					prev.next = list.getNext();
				}
				break;
			}
			list = list.next;
		}while(list != null);
		
		mapList[index] = list;
	}

	/*
	 * find the match value and return , if not found either throw exception or return null.
	 */
	private V getMatchValue(KeyValuePair<K, V> list, K key) {
		while (list != null) {
			if (list.getKey().equals(key))
				return list.getValue();
			list = list.next;
		}
		return null;
	}

	private void storeValue(int index, K key, V value) {
		KeyValuePair<K, V> list = mapList[index];
		
		// if list is empty , enter as first element
		if (list == null) {
			mapList[index] = new KeyValuePair<K, V>(key, value);
		} else {
			boolean done = false;
			// traverse through list , if a key is found ,replace the value or add it at the end of the list
			while(list.next != null) {
				if (list.getKey().equals(key)) {
					list.setValue(value);
					done = true;
					break;
				} 
				list = list.next;
			}
			// add at the end of the list
			if (!done)
				list.next = new KeyValuePair<K, V>(key, value);
		}

	}
	
	private int getHash(K key) {
		int hash = key.hashCode();
		return hash % 100;
	}
	
	public static void main(String args[]) {
		CustomHashMap<Integer, Integer> map = new CustomHashMap<Integer, Integer>();
		map.put(1, 1);
		map.put(2, 2);
		map.put(201,201);
		System.out.println("get value is " + map.get(1));
		System.out.println("get value is " + map.get(201));
		System.out.println("get value is " + map.get(2));
		map.remove(1);
		System.out.println("After deletion " + map.get(1));
		System.out.println("get value is " + map.get(201));
	}

}

class KeyValuePair<K, V> {
	K key;
	V value;
	KeyValuePair<K, V> next = null;

	public KeyValuePair<K, V> getNext() {
		return next;
	}

	public void setNext(KeyValuePair<K, V> next) {
		this.next = next;
	}

	public KeyValuePair(K key, V value) {
		super();
		this.key = key;
		this.value = value;
	}

	public K getKey() {
		return key;
	}

	public void setKey(K key) {
		this.key = key;
	}

	public V getValue() {
		return value;
	}

	public void setValue(V value) {
		this.value = value;
	}

}

Unsupported major.minor version 51.0; nested exception is java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError


While doing mvn compile i got the following error

Unsupported major.minor version 51.0; nested exception is java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError

After going through google links, the error seems to be the JDK version for compilation is different that JDK version executing it .

But when i do , java -version and javac -version , I got the same result .

java version “1.7.0_51”

Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_51-b13)

Then I decided to check java version used by maven and Aha !

frobplant-lm:test hrsht$ mvn -version

Apache Maven 3.2.1 (ea8b2b07643dbb1b84b6d16e1f08391b666bc1e9; 2014-02-14T09:37:52-08:00)

Maven home: /usr/local/Cellar/maven/3.2.1/libexec

Java version: 1.6.0_65, vendor: Apple Inc.

Maven was using java  1.6 and I had java 1.7 in the path.

To fix this I changed the path of maven java version by setting JAVA_HOME to java 1.7 .

Cheers.

How to set the JAVA_HOME variable in Mac OS X – maverick


Here’s what needs to be done:

– Start the Terminal.

$ vi ~/.bash_profile

… and paste the following (make it a single line):

export JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Frameworks/
JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK/Home

this set to java 1.6 or default installed in your mac.

But if you download and install jdk 1.7  which is pointing to /usr/bin/java

Set

export JAVA_HOME=/usr

echo $JAVA_HOME to check the java version

Maven uses JAVA_HOME value for java .

Note: I also tried creating and using the ~/.bashrc file, but that didn’t work (Mac OS 10.6.2), while ~/.bash_profile worked as expected.