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javahashmap

Alternative ways for hard-coding Map in Java?

I'm having a HashMap in my Java program consisting of around 200 -Key-Value-pairs which won't change during runtime and I am looking for a good way to initialize all the pairs. Currently I have a hard-coded method like this

private void initializeHashMap(){
    hashMap.put(1, "String1");
    hashMap.put(2, "String2");
    hashMap.put(3, "String3");
...}

for all the 200 pairs. Is that really good practice or is there another, better way maybe to read the data from another class or an external file?

Solution

  • This is the perfect use case to consider a properties file. When you read the file, it gives you a handy map to play with it.