How to iterate through HashMap in Java

Table of Contents

Introduction

In this article you will learn how to iterate through HashMap in java. There are several ways of iterating over HashMap. HashMap in Java was introduced in Java 1.2 .

HashMap in Java provides the basic implementation of Map interface of Java. It stores the data in Key-Value pairs. Key is unique in Map whereas value can be duplicate. Values are accessed by using associated key.

There are usually five ways of iterating through a HashMap in Java. In this post, we will discuss all of them.

Iterating over the HashMap’s entrySet using for-each loop

Map.entrySet() method gives a collection of Set<Map.Entry<K, V>>) of the mappings resides in this map.

Therefore, you can iterate over key-value pair by using getKey() and getValue() methods of Map.Entry<K, V>.

If you need both map keys and values in the loop this method should be used. Below is the java program of it.

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Set;
public class IterateOverHashMap {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
        Map<String, Double> employeeSalary = new HashMap<>();
        employeeSalary.put("Ram", 76000.00);
        employeeSalary.put("Amit", 120000.00);
        employeeSalary.put("Mak", 95000.00);
        employeeSalary.put("Smith", 134000.00);
        System.out.println("\n=== Iterating over the HashMap's entrySet using for-each loop ===");
        for(Map.Entry<String, Double> entry: employeeSalary.entrySet()) {
            System.out.println(entry.getKey() + " => " + entry.getValue());
        }
	}
}
Output:-
=== Iterating over the HashMap's entrySet using for-each loop ===
Mak => 95000.0
Smith => 134000.0
Amit => 120000.0
Ram => 76000.0

Using keySet() and values() methods

Map.keySet() method gives a Set view of the keys resides in this map.

Map.values() method gives a collection-view of the values resides in this map.

Therefore, if you require only keys or values from the map, we can iterate through keySet or values by using for-each loops. Below is the java program for it.

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Set;
public class IterateOverHashMap {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
        Map<String, Double> employeeSalary = new HashMap<>();
        employeeSalary.put("Ram", 76000.00);
        employeeSalary.put("Amit", 120000.00);
        employeeSalary.put("Mak", 95000.00);
        employeeSalary.put("Smith", 134000.00);
     // using keySet() for iteration over keys 
        for (String name : employeeSalary.keySet())  
            System.out.println("key: " + name); 
        // using values() for iteration over keys 
        for (Double val : employeeSalary.values())  
            System.out.println("value: " + val); 
	}
}
Output:-
key: Mak
key: Smith
key: Amit
key: Ram
value: 95000.0
value: 134000.0
value: 120000.0
value: 76000.0

Iterating over the HashMap’s entrySet using iterator()

Using iterators over Map.Entry<K, V> we can remove entries from the map during the iteration through calling of iterator.remove() method.

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Set;
public class IterateOverHashMap {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
        Map<String, Double> employeeSalary = new HashMap<>();
        employeeSalary.put("Ram", 76000.00);
        employeeSalary.put("Amit", 120000.00);
        employeeSalary.put("Mak", 95000.00);
        employeeSalary.put("Smith", 134000.00);
     // using iterators 
        Iterator<Map.Entry<String, Double>> itr = employeeSalary.entrySet().iterator(); 
        while(itr.hasNext()) 
        { 
             Map.Entry<String, Double> entry = itr.next(); 
             System.out.println("Key = " + entry.getKey() +  
                                ", Value = " + entry.getValue()); 
        } 
	}
}
Output:-
Key = Mak, Value = 95000.0
Key = Smith, Value = 134000.0
Key = Amit, Value = 120000.0
Key = Ram, Value = 76000.0

Iterating over keys and looking for values

This is very inefficient way of iterating through HashMap in Java. First we loop over keys(Map.keySet() ) and search for value(Map.get(key) for every key.

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Set;
public class IterateOverHashMap {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
        Map<String, Double> employeeSalary = new HashMap<>();
        employeeSalary.put("Ram", 76000.00);
        employeeSalary.put("Amit", 120000.00);
        employeeSalary.put("Mak", 95000.00);
        employeeSalary.put("Smith", 134000.00);
     // looping over keys 
        for (String name : employeeSalary.keySet())  
        { 
            // search  for value 
            Double val= employeeSalary.get(name); 
            System.out.println("Key = " + name + ", Value = " + val); 
        } 
	}
}
Output:-
Key = Mak, Value = 95000.0
Key = Smith, Value = 134000.0
Key = Amit, Value = 120000.0
Key = Ram, Value = 76000.0

Using Java8 forEach(action) method

In Java 8, we can iterate through HashMap in java using Map.forEach(action) method and using lambda expression. This technique is easy and fast.

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Set;
public class IterateOverHashMap {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
        Map<String, Double> employeeSalary = new HashMap<>();
        employeeSalary.put("Ram", 76000.00);
        employeeSalary.put("Amit", 120000.00);
        employeeSalary.put("Mak", 95000.00);
        employeeSalary.put("Smith", 134000.00);
     // forEach(action) method to iterate map 
        employeeSalary.forEach((k,v) -> System.out.println("Key = "
                + k + ", Value = " + v)); 
	}
}
Output:-
Key = Mak, Value = 95000.0
Key = Smith, Value = 134000.0
Key = Amit, Value = 120000.0
Key = Ram, Value = 76000.0