Weird title, I know, let me explain.
I am a developer most familiar with C# and Javascript. I am completely sunk into those semi-functional worlds to the point that most of my code is about mapping/reducing/filtering collections. In C# that means I use LINQ just about everywhere, in Javascript it’s Underscore.js and jQuery.
I have currently been assigned to an ongoing Java project and am feeling rather stifled. I simply do not think in terms of “create an array, shuffle stuff from one to another”. I can (and did) create my own versions of the main map/reduce functions using anonymous types implementing interfaces but why re-invent the wheel? The project I am currently on already has commons-collections-3.1.jar and looking through the classes contained it seems like it likely can do everything that I want and more.
For the life of me, I can’t find how to actually use it. Looking through the dozens of classes therein is not very helpful and the only thing I can google up is the api doc which is equally as helpful.
How do you use it to Map/Select, Filter/Where, Reduce/Aggregate? Is there anywhere that gives an actual tutorial on this library?
(Comment as answer for formatting purposes.)
Not so much, other than the limited user guide.
That said, I’m not sure where specifically you’re having problems–filtering and selecting is mostly wrapped up in the functors package, and utilized by the CollectionUtils class.
While you’re not looking for a replacement, you might find things like Guava or Lambda4J a bit more similar to what you’re used to (within Java’s constraints), and they’re a bit less verbose.