How to simplify a null-safe compareTo() implementation?

Question

I\'m implementing compareTo() method for a simple class such as this (to be able to use Collections.sort() and other goodies offered by the Java pl

Answer 1

I was looking for something similar and this seemed a bit complicated so I did this. I think it's a little easier to understand. You can use it as a Comparator or as a one liner. For this question you would change to compareToIgnoreCase(). As is, nulls float up. You can flip the 1, -1 if you want them to sink.

StringUtil.NULL_SAFE_COMPARATOR.compare(getName(), o.getName());

.

public class StringUtil {
    public static final Comparator NULL_SAFE_COMPARATOR = new Comparator() {

        @Override
        public int compare(final String s1, final String s2) {
            if (s1 == s2) {
                //Nulls or exact equality
                return 0;
            } else if (s1 == null) {
                //s1 null and s2 not null, so s1 less
                return -1;
            } else if (s2 == null) {
                //s2 null and s1 not null, so s1 greater
                return 1;
            } else {
                return s1.compareTo(s2);
            }
        }
    }; 

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        final ArrayList list = new ArrayList(Arrays.asList(new String[]{"qad", "bad", "sad", null, "had"}));
        Collections.sort(list, NULL_SAFE_COMPARATOR);

        System.out.println(list);
    }
}