Remove duplicates from list of user-defined class objects in Java

Let’s say we have a User class with the following properties:

  • id (this is unique for each user)
  • name

class User {
  int id;
  String name;
  public User(int id, String name) {
    this.id = id;
    this.name = name;
  }
}

Now suppose we created a duplicate User object and added it to the list of users. In this case, we can override the Object.equals and Object.hashCode method of the User class and call the distinct method on the users list. The distinct method internally calls the Object’s equals method to check for the equality of the objects and return a stream of distinct elements.

Code

import java.util.Objects;
class User {
  
  int id;
  String name;
  
  public User(int id, String name) {
    this.id = id;
    this.name = name;
  }
   @Override
    public boolean equals(Object obj) {
        if (this == obj) {
            return true;
        }
        if (obj == null) {
            return false;
        }
        if (getClass() != obj.getClass()) {
            return false;
        }
        User user = (User) obj;
        return id == user.id; 
    }
    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        return Objects.hash(id);
    }
}

In the code above, we have:

  • Created a User class with the id and name properties.
  • Overriden the equals method to implement our custom equality checking logic. We have also overridden the hashCodehashCode() returns an integer that represents the current instance of the class. . If we override equals(), we must also override hashCode().
Main.java
User.java
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Objects;
import java.util.stream.Collectors;
class RemoveDupilcate {
    public static void main( String args[] ) {
        ArrayList<User> users = new ArrayList<>();
        User user1 = new User(10, "Jaga");
        User user2 = new User(10, "Jaga");
        users.add(user1);
        users.add(user2);
        System.out.println("List with Duplicates");
        System.out.println(users);
        List<User> uniqueUser = users
                                    .stream()
                                    .distinct()
                                    .collect(Collectors.toList());
        System.out.println("List without Duplicates");
        System.out.println(uniqueUser);
    }
}

In the code above, we have:

  • Created two objects for the User class with id 10, and added them to a list users.

  • Overridden equals and hashCode in the User class to check for the equality for the object.

  • Removed the duplicate object from the users list by calling the distinct method. The distinct method will internally call the equals method of the user object to check if two objects are the same. The distinct method returns a stream of distinct objects.

  • Collected the stream of a distinct object in a list with the collect method. We have passed Collectors.toList() as an argument to signify that the collect method should create a list from the stream.

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