Question

We are storing a String key in a HashMap that is a concatenation of three String fields and a boolean field. Problem is duplicate keys can be created if the delimiter appears in the field value.

So to get around this, based on advice in another post, I’m planning on creating a key class which will be used as the HashMap key:

class TheKey {
  public final String k1;
  public final String k2;
  public final String k3;
  public final boolean k4;

  public TheKey(String k1, String k2, String k3, boolean k4) {
    this.k1 = k1; this.k2 = k2; this.k3 = k3; this.k4 = k4;
  }

  public boolean equals(Object o) {
      TheKey other = (TheKey) o;
      //return true if all four fields are equal
  }

  public int hashCode() {
    return ???;  
  }
}

My questions are:

1. What value should be returned from hashCode(). The map will hold a total of about 30 values. Of those 30, there are about 10 distinct values of k1 (some entries share the same k1 value).
2. To store this key class as the HashMap key, does one only need to override the equals() and hashCode() methods? Is anything else required?

Answer 1

Just hashCode and equals should be fine. The hashCode could look something like this:

public int hashCode() {
  int hash = 17;
  hash = hash * 31 + k1.hashCode();
  hash = hash * 31 + k2.hashCode();
  hash = hash * 31 + k3.hashCode();
  hash = hash * 31 + k4 ? 0 : 1;
  return hash;
}

That’s assuming none of the keys can be null, of course. Typically you could use 0 as the “logical” hash code for a null reference in the above equation. Two useful methods for compound equality/hash code which needs to deal with nulls:

public static boolean equals(Object o1, Object o2) {
  if (o1 == o2) {
    return true;
  }
  if (o1 == null || o2 == null) {
    return false;
  }
  return o1.equals(o2);
}

public static boolean hashCode(Object o) {
  return o == null ? 0 : o.hashCode();
}

Using the latter method in the hash algorithm at the start of this answer, you’d end up with something like:

public int hashCode() {
  int hash = 17;
  hash = hash * 31 + ObjectUtil.hashCode(k1);
  hash = hash * 31 + ObjectUtil.hashCode(k2);
  hash = hash * 31 + ObjectUtil.hashCode(k3);
  hash = hash * 31 + k4 ? 0 : 1;
  return hash;
}