Extract common objects from an arraylist - arraylist

Question

I have a list like shown below. Assume it has 16 Container objects in it. Each Container object is a simple bean, with fields like age, weight, height, etc. How can I create a sub-list that contains common 'Container' objects if a 'Container' object is considered equal if the weight and height are equal?
List<Container> containers = new ArrayList<Container>();

Answer 1

If by "common" containers you mean duplicating ones, then this code might help you:
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
public class CommonContainers {
public static void main(String[] args) {
List<Container> containers = new ArrayList<Container>(16);
for(int i=0; i<13; i++) {
containers.add(new Container(i, i));
}
//add a few duplicating ones
containers.add(new Container(1,1));
containers.add(new Container(5,5));
containers.add(new Container(6,6));
List<Container> sublist = new ArrayList<Container>();
for (Container c1 : containers) {
for (Container c2 : containers) {
if(c1 != c2 && c1.equals(c2)) {
sublist.add(c1);
}
}
}
for (Container c : sublist) {
System.out.println(c);
}
}
private static class Container {
private int weight;
private int height;
#Override
public String toString() {
return String.format("Container[w=%d,h=%d]", weight, height);
}
public Container(int weight, int height) {
this.weight = weight;
this.height = height;
}
public int getWeight() {
return weight;
}
public void setWeight(int weight) {
this.weight = weight;
}
public int getHeight() {
return height;
}
public void setHeight(int height) {
this.height = height;
}
#Override
public int hashCode() {
final int prime = 31;
int result = 1;
result = prime * result + height;
result = prime * result + weight;
return result;
}
#Override
public boolean equals(Object obj) {
if (this == obj)
return true;
if (obj == null)
return false;
if (getClass() != obj.getClass())
return false;
Container other = (Container) obj;
if (height != other.height)
return false;
if (weight != other.weight)
return false;
return true;
}
}
}
If you mean something else or need clarification, please let me know.

Answer 2

Thanks John Smith for giving direction on this question. I used the iterator instead and was able to make a nice solution to what I was looking for. below is the solution. Note that .equals is overriden for the Containers comparison. The technique I used will take the master list and create a sub-list while removing elements from the parent list at the same time. The solution can be called recursivly until you convert the master list into a subset of lists.
public List<Container> extractCommonSubList(
List<Container> masterContainerList) {
List<Container> subList = new ArrayList<Container>();
ListIterator<Container> iterator = masterContainerList.listIterator();
// get first item from master list and remove from master list
Container firstContainer = iterator.next();
iterator.remove();
// Add first container to sublist
subList.add(firstContainer);
while (iterator.hasNext()) {
Container container = iterator.next();
// Search for matches
if (firstContainer.equals(container)) {
// containers are a match, continue searching for matches
subList.add(container);
iterator.remove();
continue;
} else {
break;
}
}
// return common list
return subList;
}