I have a list of objects, some of them can be collections. I would like to get a stream of plain objects.
List<Object> objects = List.of(1, 2, "SomeString", List.of(3, 4, 5, 6), 7, List.of("a", "b", "c"), List.of(8, List.of(9, List.of(10))));
I would like to get a stream with elements.
1, 2, "SomeString", 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, "a", "b", "c", 8, 9, 10
I have tried
Function<Object, Stream<Object>> mbjectToStreamMapper = null; //define it. I have not figured it out yet! objects.stream().flatMap(ObjectToStreamMapper).forEach(System.out::println);
I also checked an example which shows how to use a recursive function which flattens a collection. However, in this example .collect(Collectors.toList());
used to keep an intermediate result. Collectors.toList()
is a terminal operation, which will start processing the stream right away. I would like to get a stream, which I can iterate on later.
Update
I agree with comments, it is a terrible idea to have a stream composed of objects of different nature. I just wrote this question for simplicity. In real life, it can be that I listen to different events, and process some business objects from incoming streams, some of them can send stream of objects, other – just single objects.
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Answer
We can recursively get the nested stream
if the object being traversed is an instance of Collection
.
public static void main(String args[]) { List<Object> objects = List.of(1, 2, "SomeString", List.of(3, 4, 5, 6), 7, List.of("a", "b", "c"), List.of(8, List.of(9, List.of(10)))); List<Object> list = objects.stream().flatMap(c -> getNestedStream(c)).collect(Collectors.toList()); } public static Stream<Object> getNestedStream(Object obj) { if(obj instanceof Collection){ return ((Collection)obj).stream().flatMap((coll) -> getNestedStream(coll)); } return Stream.of(obj); }