How to get ArrayList from Stream in Java 8 - Collectors Example, Tutorial

You can use Collectors.toList(), toSet() and toMap() to get all elements of Stream into any Collection e.g. List, Set or Map, but if you want to get a particular collection e.g. ArrayList, then you need to use Collectors.toCollection(ArrayList::new) method. This method first creates an ArrayList using method reference and then adds all elements of Stream into the ArrayList. It's very useful if you have a long list of String and you want to create a smaller list containing only String starting with the letter "b" e.g. "Bluehost". All you need to do is first get the stream from List by calling stream() method, then call the filter() method to create a new Stream of filtered values and finally call the Collectors.toCollection(ArrayList::new) to collect those elements into an ArrayList. Let's see a couple of examples to understand the concept better.

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