Question

I have a ListView that is populated by three (3) ArrayList‘s:

items, ratings and comments

However, I need to sort items by ignoring the leading ‘the’. I already have accomplished this by rearranging the items ArrayList using a Collections.sort (see code below), but this is the issue: the comments and ratings are not rearranged so it comes out of order in the ListView.

For example, if the list was:

1. Cars 3 4
2. People 5 3
3. The Animals 7 4

After items sort I am getting:

1. The Animals 3 4
2. Cars 5 3
3. People 7 4

So the items are lining up as I’d like but the associated comments and ratings aren’t sorted. I am not sure how to make that happen and where to place it. I think in the ArrayAdapter?

Here is the code I do to change the items list:

        Comparator<String> ignoreLeadingThe = new Comparator<String>() {
            public int compare(String a, String b) {
                a = a.replaceAll("(?i)^the\\s+", "");
                b = b.replaceAll("(?i)^the\\s+", "");
                return a.compareToIgnoreCase(b);
            }
        };

        Collections.sort(items, ignoreLeadingThe);

Here is the questions? Where and how can I sort the ratings and comments lists based on the position of the item list?

Edit:

this is my getView code in my ArrayAdapter:

    ItemObject io = getItem(position);
    String name = io.name;
    String total = io.total;
    String rating = io.ratings;
    String comment = io.comments;

    holder.t1.setText(name);
    holder.t2.setText(total);
    holder.t3.setText(comment);
    holder.t4.setText(rating);

Note: There is a 4th ArrayList called total I did not mention in the above example.

Answer 1

You should look at creating a class to wrap your items in the ArrayList, something like this:

class MyItem {
    String item;
    int ratings;
    int comments;
}

Then have an ArrayList of these objects instead:

List<MyItem> myList = new ArrayList<MyItem>();

Then in your comparator, just do it like you’re doing, but testing against MyItem.item instead of just a and b. Something like this:

Comparator<MyItem> ignoreLeadingThe = new Comparator<MyItem>() {
    public int compare(MyItem a, MyItem b) {
        a.item = a.item.replaceAll("(?i(^the\\s+", "");
        b.item = b.item.replaceAll("(?i(^the\\s+", "");
        return a.item.compareToIgnoreCase(b.item);
    }
};

Collections.sort(myList, ignoreLeadingThe);