Better Map Constructor

Question

Is there a more streamlined way to do the following?

Map map = new HashMap();
map.put(\"a\", \"apple\");
map.put(         


        

Answer 1

There's always double-brace initialization:

Map map = new HashMap(){{
    put("a", "apple"); put("b", "bear"); put("c", "cat");}};

There are problems with this approach. It returns an anonymous inner class extending HashMap, not a HashMap. If you need to serialize the map then know that serialization of inner classes is discouraged.