Question

Possible Duplicate:
Sorting Java objects using multiple keys

I have an employee class. Based on the employee name I want to sort. If the employee names for two objects (i.e. two employees) are same then I want to sort it with respect to the employee age.

For sorting w.r.t the employee name, I implemented the COmparable interface and used this code:

@Override
public int compareTo(Employee o) {
    return name.compareTo(o.getName());
}

This bit of code is working fine for me. But I am not able to understand how to incorporate the sorting based on age when the name of two employee are same?

Do i need to use the Comparator for this? I am not sure how to achieve this.

Please help

Answer 1

If the names are the same (ie a result of 0) then you can then sort by age. If the names return a non zero result then just return that

for example

@Override
public int compareTo(Employee o) {
    int i = name.compareTo(o.getName());
    if (i == 0) { //ie the names are the same
        return age.compareTo(o.getAge();
    }
    return i;
}