Copying a HashMap in Java

Question

I am trying to keep a temporary container of a class that contains member :

HashMap myobjectHashMap

A class called my

Answer 1

Since this question is still unanswered and I had a similar problem, I will try to answer this. The problem (as others already mentioned) is that you just copy references to the same object and thus a modify on the copy will also modify the origin object. So what you have to to is to copy the object (your map value) itself. The far easiest way to do so is to make all your objects implementing the serializeable interface. Then serialize and deserialize your map to get a real copy. You can do this by yourself or use the apache commons SerializationUtils#clone() which you can find here: https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-lang/javadocs/api-2.6/org/apache/commons/lang/SerializationUtils.html But be aware this is the simplest approach but it is an expensive task to serialize and deserialize a lot of objects.