DIYCollections

Stars
6

Overview

  1. Types of Maps (Chaining vs Open Address)
  • now while constructing the map, since keys are unique they need to be
    allocated in their correct places
  • this is handled by the hash of the key
  • hash is the integer representation of an object, this representation can be small or large
  • most common map implementations, use a hash function on top of the hash to scale the number
    to fit the map, thereby finding the location in the map where the key can be placed
  • Now this leads to interesting scenarios, because, more than 1 key can have the same hash
  • but we need the uniqueness to be maintained at a key level
  • So, this leads to what we call as collision of keys
  • There are multiple ways of handling collisions, but I will be using Map implementations which handle collisions using:
    a) Chaining: If a colliding key is found, then, the keys are placed in a LinkedList or List, and then uniqueness
    is defined for each element of the list
    b) Open Addressing: If a colliding key is found, then, the key is placed in the next available open slot
  1. Implement Bag
  • Bag or a MultiSet, is similar to a shopping bag or a basket, where for 1 article there can be 1 or more quantity
  • Example: 12 Apples, 6 Bananas, 1 Orange, etc
  • At the end of the day all we need is a Mapping of an article/object to the quantity
  • Let us develop it using TDD approaches. We are going to use the ObjectIntMap from Eclipse Collections
  • The ObjectIntMap is interesting because it gives us some API which we will look in a bit
  • But more importantly the value is an int, as in a primitive Java int, so we avoid the burden of boxing and unboxing and save memory
  • Alright, enough of me talking, let us start with some code. We will develop this using TDD approach. So first, what do I need?
  • Yes let us create a BagTest
  1. Implement Bag specific API
    • getOccurrences
    • add
    • addOccurrences
    • remove
    • removeOccurrences

Quick Recap of what we did so far:

  • Implemented a wrapper on top of a Map which will store Key to Count relationship
  • This wrapper is called as a Bag or a MultiSet
  • Implemented basic API like add(), addOccurrences(), remove(), removeOccurrences()
  • Tested that it works
  • Next steps... Take a look at the Bag specific API in Eclipse Collections: http://www.eclipse.org/collections/javadoc/9.2.0/org/eclipse/collections/api/bag/Bag.html
  • Other libraries like: Guava, Trove, etc. also have Bag implementations
  1. Implement Multimap
  2. Initialization and null safety for values
  3. How to preserve backing collection semantics with minimal code
  4. Implement Multimap specific API
    • put/add
    • putAll/addAll
    • remove
    • removeAll

Recap:

  • Implemented 2 Multimaps (or MultiValuedMaps) where the value collections were either List or Set
  • Centralized the common code such that the List and Set backed implementations were cleaner
  • Possible to further change it by using default methods
  • Removal is as complicated as addition
  • Take care of the initialization and null safety

If time permits

  1. add vs put? How to name?