Question

I have two classes, ClassA and ClassB, as well as a “many to many” AssociationClass. I want a structure that holds the associations between A and B so that I can find the counterpart for each instance of A or B.

I thought of using a Hashmap, with pair keys:

Hasmap<Pair<ClassA, ClassB>, AssociationClass> associations;

This way, I can add and remove an association between two instances of ClassA and ClassB, and I can query a relation for two given instances.

However, I miss the feature of getting all associations defined for a given instance of ClassA or ClassB.

I could do it by brute force and loop over all keys of the map to search for associations between a given instance, but this is inefficient and not elegant.

Do you know of any data structure / free library that enables this? I don’t want to reinvent the wheel.

NB: This is not a “database” question. These objects are pure POJO used for live computation, I don’t need persistence stuff.

Answer 1

Thanks for your suggestions.

I finally reinvented the wheel …
I have written a generic class for holding associations.
I use two maps of maps, synchronized.

The associations holder provides the following methods

void setAssociation(LeftClass left, RightClass right, AssociationClass assoc);
AssociationClass getAssociation(LeftClass left, RightClass right);
Map<RightClass, AssociationClass> getAssocationsLeft(LeftClass left);
Map<LeftClass, AssociationClass> getAssocationsRight(RightClass right); 
void removeAssociation(LeftClass left, RightClass right);

Here is the code:

import java.util.HashMap;

/** This class holds many to many associations between two classes. */
public class AssociationHolder<LeftClass, RightClass, AssociationClass> {

    // -------------------------------------------------------
    // Attributes
    // -------------------------------------------------------

    private HashMap<LeftClass, HashMap<RightClass, AssociationClass>> associationsLeft = 
        new HashMap<LeftClass, HashMap<RightClass,AssociationClass>>();
    private HashMap<RightClass, HashMap<LeftClass, AssociationClass>> associationsRight = 
        new HashMap<RightClass, HashMap<LeftClass,AssociationClass>>();     

    // -------------------------------------------------------
    // Methods
    // -------------------------------------------------------

    /** 
     *  Set an association between two instance.
     *  Any prior association is overwritten.
     */
    public void setAssociation(LeftClass left, RightClass right, AssociationClass association) {

        // Get the map for the left 
        HashMap<RightClass, AssociationClass> leftMap = this.associationsLeft.get(left);

        // No association defined yet for this left key ? => Create new map
        if (leftMap == null) {
            leftMap = new HashMap<RightClass, AssociationClass>();
            this.associationsLeft.put(left, leftMap);
        }

        // Get the map for the right 
        HashMap<LeftClass, AssociationClass> rightMap = this.associationsRight.get(right);

        // No association defined yet for this right key ? => Create new map
        if (rightMap == null) {
            rightMap = new HashMap<LeftClass, AssociationClass>();
            this.associationsRight.put(right, rightMap);
        }

        // Set the assoication on both maps
        leftMap.put(right, association);
        rightMap.put(left, association);        

    } 

    /** @return null if no association found. */
    public AssociationClass getAssociation(LeftClass left, RightClass right) {

        // Use left maps (could have used the right one as well)
        HashMap<RightClass, AssociationClass> leftMap = this.associationsLeft.get(left);
        if (leftMap == null) return null;
        return leftMap.get(right);
    }

    /** Get all associations defined for a given Left instance.  */
    public HashMap<RightClass, AssociationClass> getAssociationsLeft(LeftClass left) {

        HashMap<RightClass, AssociationClass> leftMap = this.associationsLeft.get(left);

        // No map defined ? return empty one instead of null
        if (leftMap == null) {
            return new HashMap<RightClass, AssociationClass>();
        } else {
            return leftMap;
        }   
    }

    /** Get all associations defined for a given Right instance.  */
    public HashMap<LeftClass, AssociationClass> getAssociationsRight(RightClass right) {

        HashMap<LeftClass, AssociationClass> rightMap = this.associationsRight.get(right);

        // No map defined ? return empty one instead of null
        if (rightMap == null) {
            return new HashMap<LeftClass, AssociationClass>();
        } else {
            return rightMap;
        }   
    }

    /** 
     *  Remove an association between two instances.
     */
    public void removeAssociation(LeftClass left, RightClass right) {
        HashMap<RightClass, AssociationClass> leftMap = this.getAssociationsLeft(left);
        HashMap<LeftClass, AssociationClass> rightMap = this.getAssociationsRight(right);
        leftMap.remove(right);      
        rightMap.remove(left);  
    }
}

I hope this can help someone in the future.