How do I use Comparator to define a custom sort order?

Solution 1:

I recommend you create an enum for your car colours instead of using Strings and the natural ordering of the enum will be the order in which you declare the constants.

public enum PaintColors {
    SILVER, BLUE, MAGENTA, RED
}

and

 static class ColorComparator implements Comparator<CarSort>
 {
     public int compare(CarSort c1, CarSort c2)
     {
         return c1.getColor().compareTo(c2.getColor());
     }
 }

You change the String to PaintColor and then in main your car list becomes:

carList.add(new CarSort("Ford Figo",PaintColor.SILVER));

...

Collections.sort(carList, new ColorComparator());

Solution 2:

How about this:

List<String> definedOrder = // define your custom order
    Arrays.asList("Red", "Green", "Magenta", "Silver");

Comparator<Car> comparator = new Comparator<Car>(){

    @Override
    public int compare(final Car o1, final Car o2){
        // let your comparator look up your car's color in the custom order
        return Integer.valueOf(
            definedOrder.indexOf(o1.getColor()))
            .compareTo(
                Integer.valueOf(
                    definedOrder.indexOf(o2.getColor())));
    }
};

In principle, I agree that using an enum is an even better approach, but this version is more flexible as it lets you define different sort orders.

Update

Guava has this functionality baked into its Ordering class:

List<String> colorOrder = ImmutableList.of("red","green","blue","yellow");
final Ordering<String> colorOrdering = Ordering.explicit(colorOrder);
Comparator<Car> comp = new Comparator<Car>() {
    @Override
    public int compare(Car o1, Car o2) {
        return colorOrdering.compare(o1.getColor(),o2.getColor());
    }
}; 

This version is a bit less verbose.

Update again

Java 8 makes the Comparator even less verbose:

Comparator<Car> carComparator = Comparator.comparing(
        c -> definedOrder.indexOf(c.getColor()));

Solution 3:

Comparator in line ...

List<Object> objList = findObj(name);
Collections.sort(objList, new Comparator<Object>() {
    @Override
    public int compare(Object a1, Object a2) {
        return a1.getType().compareToIgnoreCase(a2.getType());
    }
});