Question

I have a list of objects. The objects are given an ID and stored in a Hashtable. If I need an object with particular ID, I simply say:

ht.get(ID);

However, sometimes I need to get the ID for a given object:

ht.get(Object);

My first idea is to use two different HashTables; one for ID -> Object mapping and the other for Object -> ID mapping.

Does this sound like a good enough solution?

Answer 1

If you cannot use external collections (as you seem to not want to use given one of your comments) you could write a simple class to do what you want (which, yes, is essentially your first thought), along the lines of (I didn’t compile this, and it is just a first thought so could be a bad idea, etc …):

EDIT: now there are two versions, one that allows for duplicate values and one that does not. The ones that does not will remove the key if the value is overwritten.

This version does not allow duplicate values:

class Foo<K, V>
{
    private final Map<K, V> keyValue;
    private final Map<V, K> valueKey;

    {
        keyValue = new HashMap<K, V>();
        valueKey = new HashMap<V, K>();
    }

    // this makes sure that if you do not have duplicate values.
    public void put(final K key, final V value)
    {
        if(keyValue.containsValue(value))
        {
            keyValue.remove(valueKey.get(value));
        }

        keyValue.put(key, value);
        valueKey.put(value, key);
    }

    public V getValueForKey(final K key)
    {
        return (keyValue.get(key));
    }

    public K getKeyForValue(final V value)
    {
        return (valueKey.get(value));
    }

    public static void main(final String[] argv)
    {
        Foo<String, String> foo;

        foo = new Foo<String, String>();
        foo.put("a", "Hello");
        foo.put("b", "World");
        foo.put("c", "Hello");

        System.out.println(foo.getValueForKey("a"));
        System.out.println(foo.getValueForKey("b"));
        System.out.println(foo.getValueForKey("c"));

        System.out.println(foo.getKeyForValue("Hello"));
        System.out.println(foo.getKeyForValue("World"));
    }
}

This version allows duplicated values and gives you back a list of all of the keys that have a given value:

class Foo<K, V>
{
    private final Map<K, V> keyValue;
    private final Map<V, List<K>> valueKeys;

    {
        keyValue = new HashMap<K, V>();
        valueKeys = new HashMap<V, List<K>>();
    }

    public void put(final K key, final V value)
    {
        List<K> values;

        keyValue.put(key, value);

        values = valueKeys.get(value);

        if(values == null)
        {
            values = new ArrayList<K>();
            valueKeys.put(value, values);
        }

        values.add(key);
    }

    public V getValueForKey(final K key)
    {
        return (keyValue.get(key));
    }

    public List<K> getKeyForValue(final V value)
    {
        return (valueKeys.get(value));
    }

    public static void main(final String[] argv)
    {
        Foo<String, String> foo;

        foo = new Foo<String, String>();
        foo.put("a", "Hello");
        foo.put("b", "World");
        foo.put("c", "Hello");

        System.out.println(foo.getValueForKey("a"));
        System.out.println(foo.getValueForKey("b"));
        System.out.println(foo.getValueForKey("c"));

        System.out.println(foo.getKeyForValue("Hello"));
        System.out.println(foo.getKeyForValue("World"));
    }
}

Hiding the two maps in a class is a good idea, because of you find a better way later all you need to do is replace the innards of the class and the rest of your code is left untouched.