Getting object with max date property from list of objects Java 8

Question

I have a class called Contact that has a Date lastUpdated; variable.

I would like to pull the Contact out of a List

Answer 1

and the Contact class should not always use the lastUpdated variable for comparing instances

So you will have to provide a custom comparator whenever you want to compare multiple instances by their lastUpdated property, as it implies that this class is not comparable by default with this field.

Comparator cmp = Comparator.comparing(Contact::getLastUpdated);

As you know you can either use Collections.max or the Stream API to get the max instance according to this field, but you can't avoid writing a custom comparator.