collections - Difference between HashMap and ArrayList in Java?

Question

In Java, ArrayList and HashMap are used as collections. But I couldn't understand in which situations we should use ArrayList and which times to use HashMap. What is the major difference between both of them?

Answer 1

You are asking specifically about ArrayList and HashMap, but I think to fully understand what is going on you have to understand the Collections framework. So an ArrayList implements the List interface and a HashMap implements the Map interface. So the real question is when do you want to use a List and when do you want to use a Map. This is where the Java API documentation helps a lot.

List:

An ordered collection (also known as a sequence). The user of this interface has precise control over where in the list each element is inserted. The user can access elements by their integer index (position in the list), and search for elements in the list.

Map:

An object that maps keys to values. A map cannot contain duplicate keys; each key can map to at most one value.

So as other answers have discussed, the list interface (ArrayList) is an ordered collection of objects that you access using an index, much like an array (well in the case of ArrayList, as the name suggests, it is just an array in the background, but a lot of the details of dealing with the array are handled for you). You would use an ArrayList when you want to keep things in sorted order (the order they are added, or indeed the position within the list that you specify when you add the object).

A Map on the other hand takes one object and uses that as a key (index) to another object (the value). So lets say you have objects which have unique IDs, and you know you are going to want to access these objects by ID at some point, the Map will make this very easy on you (and quicker/more efficient). The HashMap implementation uses the hash value of the key object to locate where it is stored, so there is no guarentee of the order of the values anymore. There are however other classes in the Java API that can provide this, e.g. LinkedHashMap, which as well as using a hash table to store the key/value pairs, also maintains a List (LinkedList) of the keys in the order they were added, so you can always access the items again in the order they were added (if needed).