Hi, dear readers! Welcome to my blog. On this post, the first of a 3-part series, we will talk about the new features of Java 8, launched on 2014. The new version comes with several features that change the way we think when we code on Java. The series will be split on 3 pillars, each dedicated to one specific subject, as it follows:

• Lambdas;
• Streams;
• java.time (aka the new Date API);

So, without further delay, let’s begin by talking about what probably is the most famous of the new features: Lambdas!

Lambdas

On a nutshell, a lambda on Java is a way that the Java ecosystem aggregated in order to enable the use of functional programming. The functional programming paradigm is a programming paradigm that advocate the use of functions – or in other words, blocks of code with arguments and/or return values – that work on a sequence of calls, without the implications of maintaining states of variables and such. With lambdas, we can create and store functions on our code, that we can use across our programs. One of the major benefits we can take on this method is the simplification of our code, that become simpler then the usual way.

So, let’s begin with the examples!

Let’s imagine we want to print all the numbers from a for looping, using a new thread to print each number. On a Java code made pre-Java 8, we could do this by coding the following:

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for (int i = 1; i <= 10; i++) {

final int number = i;

Thread thread = new Thread(new Runnable() {

@Override
public void run() {

System.out.println(“The number is ” + number);

}

});

thread.start();

}

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There’s nothing wrong with the above code, except maybe the verbosity of the code, since we need to declare the interface (runnable) and the method (run()) we want to override, in order to create the inner class we need to create the Thread’s implementation. It would be good if the Java language had any feature that could remove this verbosity out of the way. Now, with Java 8, we have such feature: lambdas!

Let’s revisit the same example, now with a lambda:

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for (int i = 1; i <= 10; i++) {

int number = i;

Runnable runnable = () -> System.out
.println(“The number with a lambda is ” + number);

Thread thread = new Thread(runnable);

thread.start();

}

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As we can see, the lambda version is much simpler then our previous code, taking the creation of the thread’s implementation to a simple one-line command. One interesting thing to notice is that the “runnable” variable we created on our code is it not a object, but a function. That means that the “translation” of the lambda differs from the interpretation of a inner class. This become apparent when we print the result of the getClass method of our lambda, which will produce a print like the following:

The ‘class’ of our lambda: class com.alexandreesl.handson.LambdaBaseExample$$Lambda$1/424058530

This is interesting, because if we search for the compiled folder of our project, we can see that, depending on the strategy the compiler is using, he didn’t even produce a .class file for the lambda, opposed to a inner class! If the reader want to delve more on the subject of the lambda’s interpretation, this link has more information on this subject.

The reader may also notice that we didn’t need to declare the number variable as final in order to the lambda to read the value. That is because on the lambda’s interpretation, the concept that the variable is implicitly final is enough for the compiler to accept our code. If we try to use the variable on any other place of the code, we would receive a compilation error.

Well, everything is good, but the reader may be questioning: “but how does the compiler now which method I am trying to override from the Runnable interface?”

Is to resolve that question that enters another new concept on Java 8: Functional Interfaces!

A functional interface is a interface that has just one abstract method – by default, all methods are abstract on a interface, with the exception of another novelty we will talk about it in a few moments -, which means that when the compiler checks the interface, he interprets that method as the one to infer the lambda. One key point here is that, in order to promote a interface to be a functional interface, all we have to do is having just one abstract method on it, so all the older Java interfaces that has this condition are already functional interfaces, like the Runnable interface, that we used previously. If we want to ensure that a functional interface won’t be demoted from this condition, there is a new annotation called @FunctionalInterface. Let’s see a example of the use of this annotation.

Let’s create a interface called MyInterface, with the@FunctionalInterface annotation:

package com.alexandreesl.handson;

@FunctionalInterface
public interface MyInterface {

void methodA(String message);

}

Now, let’s create a class and test creating a lambda for our functional interface:

package com.alexandreesl.handson;

public class FunctionalInterfaceExample {

public static void main(String[] args) {

MyInterface myFunctionalInterface = (message) -> System.out
.println(“The message is: ” + message);

myFunctionalInterface.methodA(“SECRET MESSAGE!”);

}

}

If we run the code, we can see that works as intended:

The message is: SECRET MESSAGE!

Now, let’s try adding another method to the interface:

package com.alexandreesl.handson;

@FunctionalInterface
public interface MyInterface {

void methodA(String message);

void methodB();

}

When we add this method and save, Eclipse – in case the reader is using a IDE for the examples – will immediately get a compiler error:

Description Resource Path Location Type
The target type of this expression must be a functional interface FunctionalInterfaceExample.java /Java8Lambdas/src/main/java/com/alexandreesl/handson line 7 Java Problem

If we try to run the class we created previously, we will receive the following error:

Exception in thread “main” java.lang.Error: Unresolved compilation problem:
The target type of this expression must be a functional interface

at com.alexandreesl.handson.FunctionalInterfaceExample.main(FunctionalInterfaceExample.java:7)

The reader remembers, a moment ago, we talked about another novelty on the language when we were talking about interfaces having by default abstract methods. Well, now, we also have the possibility to do the unthinkable: implementations on Interfaces! So it enters the default methods!

Default methods

A default method is a method on a interface that, as the name implies, has a default implementation. Let’s see this on our previous interface. Let’s change MyInterface to the following:

package com.alexandreesl.handson;

@FunctionalInterface
public interface MyInterface {

void methodA(String message);

default String methodB(String message) {
System.out.println(“I received: ” + message);
message += ” ALTERED!”;
return message;
}

}

As we can see, it is simple to create a default method, all we have to do is use the keyword default and provide a implementation. To test our modifications, let’s change our test class to:

package com.alexandreesl.handson;

public class FunctionalInterfaceExample {

public static void main(String[] args) {

MyInterface myFunctionalInterface = (message) -> System.out
.println(“The message is: ” + message);

String secret = “SECRET MESSAGE!”;

myFunctionalInterface.methodA(secret);

System.out.println(myFunctionalInterface.methodB(secret));

}

}

If we run the code:

The message is: SECRET MESSAGE!
I received: SECRET MESSAGE!
SECRET MESSAGE! ALTERED!

We can see that our modifications were successful.

Multiple Inheritance

The reader may be asking: “My God! This is multiple inheritance on Java!”. Indeed, on a first look, that could be seen to be the case, but the goal that the Java developer team behind the Java 8 targeted was actually the maintenance of old Java interfaces. On Java 8, the List interface for example has new methods, like the forEach method, that enables us to iterate through a collection using a lambda. Just imagine the chaos that it would be on the whole Java ecosystem – proprietary and open-source frameworks alike – not to mention our own Java project’s code, if we would need to implement this new method on all the places! In order to prevent this, the default methods were created.

Still, if the reader is not convinced, the leaders of the specification had prepared a page with their arguments on this case, like for example the fact that default methods can’t use state variables, since interfaces didn’t accept variables. the link to the page can be found here.

Method References

Another new feature of Java 8’s plethora is method references. With method references, in the same way we did with lambdas, we can shorten our code when accessing methods, making the code more “functional readable”.  Let’s make a POJO for example:

public class Client {

private String name;

private Long phone;

private String sex;

public String getName() {
return name;
}

public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}

public Long getPhone() {
return phone;
}

public void setPhone(Long phone) {
this.phone = phone;
}

public String getSex() {
return sex;
}

public void setSex(String sex) {
this.sex = sex;
}

public void markClientSpecial() {

System.out.println(“The client ” + getName() + ” is special! “);

}

}

Now, let’s imagine that we want to populate a List of this POJOs, and iterate by them, calling the markClientSpecial method. Before Java 8, we could do this by doing the following:

public class MethodReferencesExample {

public static void main(String[] args) {

List<Client> list = new ArrayList<>();

Client clientData = new Client();

clientData.setName(“Alexandre Eleuterio Santos Lourenco”);
clientData.setPhone(33455676l);
clientData.setSex(“M”);

list.add(clientData);

clientData = new Client();

clientData.setName(“Lucebiane Santos Lourenco”);
clientData.setPhone(456782387l);
clientData.setSex(“F”);

list.add(clientData);

clientData = new Client();

clientData.setName(“Ana Carolina Fernandes do Sim”);
clientData.setPhone(345622189l);
clientData.setSex(“F”);

list.add(clientData);

// pre Java 8

System.out.println(“PRE-JAVA 8!”);

for (Client client : list) {

client.markClientSpecial();

}

}

}

We iterate using a for loop, calling the method explicit. Now on Java 8, with Lambdas, we can do the following:

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// Java 8 with lambdas

System.out.println(“JAVA 8 WITH LAMBDAS!”);

list.forEach(client -> client.markClientSpecial());

Using the new forEach method, we iterated by the elements of the list, also calling our desired method. But that is not all! With method references, we could also do the following:

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// Java 8 with method references

System.out.println(“JAVA 8 WITH METHOD REFERENCES!”);

list.forEach(Client::markClientSpecial);

With the method reference syntax, we indicate the class which we want to execute a method – in our case, the Client class – and a reference of the method we want  to execute. The forEach method interprets that we want to execute this method for all the elements of the List, as we can see on the results of our execution:

PRE-JAVA 8!
The client Alexandre Eleuterio Santos Lourenco is special!
The client Lucebiane Santos Lourenco is special!
The client Ana Carolina Fernandes do Sim is special!
JAVA 8 WITH LAMBDAS!
The client Alexandre Eleuterio Santos Lourenco is special!
The client Lucebiane Santos Lourenco is special!
The client Ana Carolina Fernandes do Sim is special!
JAVA 8 WITH METHOD REFERENCES!
The client Alexandre Eleuterio Santos Lourenco is special!
The client Lucebiane Santos Lourenco is special!
The client Ana Carolina Fernandes do Sim is special!

The method references could also be pointed for methods referring a specific instance. This is interesting for example if we want to make a Thread that only will execute a method from a Object’s instance in her run method:

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// Thread with method reference

Client client = list.get(0);

Thread thread = new Thread(client::markClientSpecial);

System.out.println(“THREAD WITH METHOD REFERENCES!”);

thread.run();

On our examples, we are only using method references without parameters and no return values, but is also possible to use methods with parameters or returns, for example using the Consumer and Supplier interfaces:

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// Method references with a parameter and return
System.out.println(“METHOD REFERENCES WITH PARAMETERS!”);

client = list.get(1);

Consumer<String> consumer = client::setName;

consumer.accept(“Altering the name! “);

Supplier<String> supplier = client::getName;

System.out.println(supplier.get());

With method references, we can get, in some cases, a even more simple code than with lambdas!

Typing of a Lambda 

One last subject we will talk about on this first part, is the typing of a lambda. To define the type of a lambda, the compiler infer the typing by using a technique we call context, which means that he uses the context of the method or constructor the lambda is being used to identify the type of the lambda. For example, if we see our first lambda example:

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Runnable runnable = () -> System.out
.println(“The number with a lambda is ” + number);

Thread thread = new Thread(runnable);

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We can see that we declared the lambda as of type Runnable and passed to a Thread class. However, we could also coded like this:

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Thread thread = new Thread(() -> System.out
.println(“The number with a lambda is ” + number));

thread.start();

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And the code would also work as well. On this case, the compiler would utilize the type of the parameter of the Thread’s class constructor – a Runnable interface implementation – to infer the type of the Lambda.

Conclusion

And that concludes the first part of our series. Proposing a new way to see how we code, searching for more simplicity and enabling the refactoring of old interfaces, the new features of Java 8 come to stay, changing our way of developing and evolving our Java projects. Thank you for following on this post, until next time.

Lambda project

Functional programming

Source-code (Github)