Best way to get value from Collection by index

What is the best way to get value from java.util.Collection by index?

You shouldn't. a Collection avoids talking about indexes specifically because it might not make sense for the specific collection. For example, a List implies some form of ordering, but a Set does not.

Collection<String> myCollection = new HashSet<String>();
myCollection.add("Hello");
myCollection.add("World");

for (String elem : myCollection) {
    System.out.println("elem = " + elem);
}

System.out.println("myCollection.toArray()[0] = " + myCollection.toArray()[0]);

gives me:

elem = World
elem = Hello
myCollection.toArray()[0] = World

whilst:

myCollection = new ArrayList<String>();
myCollection.add("Hello");
myCollection.add("World");

for (String elem : myCollection) {
    System.out.println("elem = " + elem);
}

System.out.println("myCollection.toArray()[0] = " + myCollection.toArray()[0]);

gives me:

elem = Hello
elem = World
myCollection.toArray()[0] = Hello

Why do you want to do this? Could you not just iterate over the collection?

I agree with Matthew Flaschen's answer and just wanted to show examples of the options for the case you cannot switch to List (because a library returns you a Collection):

List list = new ArrayList(theCollection);
list.get(5);

Or

Object[] list2 = theCollection.toArray();
doSomethingWith(list[2]);

If you know what generics is I can provide samples for that too.

Edit: It's another question what the intent and semantics of the original collection is.

In general, there is no good way, as Collections are not guaranteed to have fixed indices. Yes, you can iterate through them, which is how toArray (and other functions) work. But the iteration order isn't necessarily fixed, and if you're trying to index into a general Collection, you're probably doing something wrong. It would make more sense to index into a List.

I agree that this is generally a bad idea. However, Commons Collections had a nice routine for getting the value by index if you really need to:

CollectionUtils.get(collection, index)

You must either wrap your collection in a list (new ArrayList(c)) or use c.toArray() since Collections have no notion of "index" or "order".