Post summary: Short overview of the most interesting and useful Java 8 features.
More details and code examples are available for Stream API in a post to follow.
Java 8
Java 8 is released March 2014, more than three years ago, so we should have already been familiar with its features, which are really nice and can significantly improve our code. Below are some of them I find most interesting and important.
Lambda expressions
In math, Lambda calculus is a way for expressing computation based on function abstraction and was first introduced in the 1930s. This is where the name of Lambda expressions in Java comes from. Functional interface is another concept that is closely related to lambda expressions. A functional interface is an interface with just one method that is to be implemented. Lambda expression is an inline code that implements this interface without creating a concrete or anonymous class. Lambda expression is basically an anonymous method. With lambda expression code is treated as data and lambda expression can be passed as an argument to another method allowing code itself to be invoked at a later stage. Sometimes when using lambda expression all you do is call a single method by name. Method reference is a shortcut for calling a method making the code more readable. Lambdas, functional interfaces, and method reference are very much used with Stream API and will be covered in detail in Java 8 features – Stream API explained post.
Method implementation in an Interface
With this feature interfaces are not what they used to be. It is now possible to have method implementation inside an interface. There are two types of methods – default and static. Default methods have implementation and all classes implementing this interface inherit this implementation. It is possible to override the existing default method. Static methods also have an implementation, but cannot be overridden. Static methods are accessible from interfaces only (InterfaceName.methodName()), they are not accessible from classes implementing those interfaces. Having said that it seems now that interface with static methods is a good candidate for utility class, instead of having a final class with private constructor as it is usually done. I will not give code examples for this feature, there are lots of resources online.
Stream API
This might be the most significant feature in Java 8 release. It is related to lambda expressions as Stream methods have functional interfaces in their signature, so it is nice and easy to pass lambda expression. Stream API was introduced because default methods in interfaces were allowed. Interface java.util.Collection was extended with stream() method and if default methods were not allowed this would have meant a lot of custom implementations broken, essentially an incompatible change. Stream API provides methods for building pipelines for data processing. Unlike collections streams are not physical objects, they are abstractions and become physical when they are needed. The huge benefits of streams are that they are designed to facilitate multi-core architectures without developers to worry about it. Everything happens behind the scenes. Stream API is explained in more details in the following posts:
- Java 8 features – Stream API explained
- Java 8 features – Stream API basic examples
- Java 8 features – Stream API advanced examples
Date and Time API
Prior to Java 8 date-time classes were not thread-safe and calculations and date-time manipulations were very hard. Also, time zones management was hard. In Java 8 date-time classes are now immutable which makes then thread-safe. In most of the projects, I’ve seen prior to Java 8 instead of using default Java time classes Joda-Time library was used. It is an amazing library providing so many features to manipulate date and time. In Java 8 date and time classes follow principles from Joda-Time which makes Java 8 Date and Time API very efficient. Actually, the Joda-Time designer was the Java specification lead for JSR 310. In Java 8 there are local and zoned date-time classes. I’m not going to get into details here, there are many tutorials online for Java 8 Date and Time API usage. I just say – start using it! It is located in java.time.* package.
Conclusion
Java 8 has really great features. I anticipate you are already using it, if not – start right now!
