Core Java

Function interface – A functional interface in the java.util.function package in Java 8

I had previously written about functional interfaces and their usage. If you are exploring the APIs to be part of Java 8 and especially those APIs which support lambda expressions you will find few interfaces like- Function, Supplier, Consumer, Predicate and others which are all part of the java.util.function package, being used extensively. These interfaces have one abstract method, which is overridden by the lambda expression defined. In this post I will pick Function interface to explain about it in brief and it is one of the interfaces present in java.util.function package.

Function interface has two methods:
 
 

In this post I would like to write about the apply method, creating APIs which accept these interfaces and parameters and then invoke their corresponding methods. We will also look at how the caller of the API can pass in a lambda expression in place of an implementation of the interface. Apart from passing a lambda expression, the users of the API can also pass method references, about which I havent blogged yet.

Function interface is uses in cases where you want to encapsulate some code into a method which accepts some value as an input parameter and then returns another value after performing required operations on the input. The input parameter type and the return type of the method can either be same or different.

Lets look at an API which accepts an implementation of Function interface:

public class FunctionDemo {

   //API which accepts an implementation of 
   //Function interface
  static void modifyTheValue(int valueToBeOperated, 
          Function<Integer, Integer> function){

    int newValue = function.apply(valueToBeOperated);
    /*
     * Do some operations using the new value.
     */
    System.out.println(newValue);
  } 
}

Now lets look at the code which invokes this API:

public static void main(String[] args) {
  int incr = 20;
  int myNumber = 10;
  modifyTheValue(myNumber, val-> val + incr);

  myNumber = 15;
  modifyTheValue(myNumber, val-> val * 10);
  modifyTheValue(myNumber, val-> val - 100);
  modifyTheValue(myNumber, val-> "somestring".length() + val - 100);
}

You can see that the lambda expressions being created accept one parameter and return some value.

I will update soon about the various APIs which use this Function interface as a parameter. Meanwhile the complete code is:

public class FunctionDemo {

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    int incr = 20;
    int myNumber = 10;
    modifyTheValue(myNumber, val-> val + incr);

    myNumber = 15;
    modifyTheValue(myNumber, val-> val * 10);
    modifyTheValue(myNumber, val-> val - 100);
    modifyTheValue(myNumber, val-> "somestring".length() + val - 100);
  }

  //API which accepts an implementation of 
  //Function interface
  static void modifyTheValue(int valueToBeOperated, 
          Function<Integer, Integer> function){
    int newValue = function.apply(valueToBeOperated);
    /*
     * Do some operations using the new value.
     */
    System.out.println(newValue);
  }

}

and the output is:

30
150
-85
-75

Note: The above code was compiled using the JDK downloaded from here and Netbeans 8 nightly builds.
 

Reference: Function interface – A functional interface in the java.util.function package in Java 8 from our JCG partner Mohamed Sanaulla at the Experiences Unlimited blog.

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MrKlister
MrKlister
11 years ago

Thanks for a great example! Seeing forward to this in java 8. I have an unrelated question though. You are using single quotes to define strings e.g. ‘somestring’ in your example. Is this also something new in java 8?

Mohamed Sanaulla
11 years ago
Reply to  MrKlister

In my original post I have used double quotes, but here its been changed to single quote.

Andidev
Andidev
11 years ago

To bad was hoping for a new Java 8 feature =(

Byron Kiourtzoglou
11 years ago
Reply to  MrKlister

Hello Andidev,

We have fixed the issue, sorry foe the inconvenience!

Best regards
Byron

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