Alphabetically Sort a Java Collection based upon the 'toString' value of its member items

Question

Assume I have a user defined Java class called Foo such as:

public class Foo 
{

    private String aField;

    @Override
    public String toString()
    {         


        

Answer 1

google-collections makes this really easy with Ordering:

Collections.sort(list, Ordering.usingToString());

Is bringing in a whole 3rd-party library just to use something you could write trivially using a Comparator (as others have provided) worthwhile? No, but google-collections is so cool you'll want to have it anyway for a bunch of other reasons.

On the sorting front, you can also easily do things like reversing:

Ordering.usingToString().reverse();

or break ties:

Ordering.usingToString().compound(someOtherComparator);

or deal with nulls:

Ordering.usingToString().nullsFirst();

etc., but there's a bunch more stuff in there (not just sorting-related, of course) that leads to really expressive code. Check it out!