How to sort Map values by key in Java?

Question

I have a Map that has strings for both keys and values.

Data is like following:

\"question1\", \"1\"
\"question9\", \"1\"
\"que

Answer 1

This code can sort a key-value map in both orders i.e. ascending and descending.

> Map sortByValues
     (final Map map, int ascending)
{
     Comparator valueComparator =  new Comparator() {         
        private int ascending;
        public int compare(K k1, K k2) {
            int compare = map.get(k2).compareTo(map.get(k1));
            if (compare == 0) return 1;
            else return ascending*compare;
        }
        public Comparator setParam(int ascending)
        {
            this.ascending = ascending;
            return this;
        }
    }.setParam(ascending);

    Map sortedByValues = new TreeMap(valueComparator);
    sortedByValues.putAll(map);
    return sortedByValues;
}

As an example:

Map recommWarrVals = new HashMap();
recommWarrVals = sortByValues(recommWarrVals, 1);  // Ascending order
recommWarrVals = sortByValues(recommWarrVals,-1);  // Descending order