compareTo method logic to sort List by multiple variables

Question

Problem : Create a standalone jar executable which will print the list of candidates appearing for the interview sorted order by name, age and experience ascending.

I am having trouble figuring out the compareTo method logic to be able to sort the 3 fields in the given problem.

Employee Class

package com.example.demo.employee;

public class Employee implements Comparable<Employee> {

private String name;
private int age;
private int exp;

public Employee(String name, int age, int exp) {
    super();
    this.name = name;
    this.age = age;
    this.exp = exp;
}

public Employee() {
}

// getter setter

@Override
public int compareTo(Employee emp) {

    // I do not think this logic is correct
    // I have read the other stack overflow posts with similar problem
    // but failing to under stand what to do in this method.

    int result = (this.name).compareTo(emp.name);
    if ( result == 0 ) {
        result = (this.age).compareTo(emp.age);
    }

    if ( result == 0 ) {
        result = (this.exp).compareTo(emp.exp);
    }
    return result;
 }

}

Employee Service Class

package com.example.demo.employee;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;

import java.util.List;

@Service
public class EmployeeService {


public List<Employee> getEmployees() {

    Employee e1 = new Employee("Sandhya", 20, 0);
    Employee e2 = new Employee("Kemp", 24, 2);
    Employee e3 = new Employee("Anil", 22, 3);
    Employee e4 = new Employee("Kumar", 30, 6);
    Employee e5 = new Employee("Tim", 32, 7);

public List<Employee> getEmployees() {

    List<Employee> eList = new ArrayList<>();
    eList.add(e1);
    eList.add(e2);
    eList.add(e3);
    eList.add(e4);
    eList.add(e5);

    Collections.sort(eList);

    return eList;
  }
}

EmployeeController

package com.example.demo.employee;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

import java.util.List;

@RestController
public class EmployeeController {

@Autowired
EmployeeService es;

@RequestMapping(value = "/")
public List<Employee> getEmpList(){
    List<Employee> list = es.getEmployees();
    return list;
  }

}

Answer 1

No need to implement Comparable and override the compareTo method, just use Comparator

Comparator<Employee> c = Comparator.comparing(Employee::getName)
                                       .thenComparing(Employee::getAge)
                                       .thenComparing(Employee::getExp);

And the use Collections.sort() to sort the list using passed Comparator

Collections.sort(eList,c);

By using Comparable

The problem is age and exp are int type which is primitive were you cannot use compareTo method, change their type to Integer wrapper object or use Integer.compare(int a, int b) method

private int age;    // to private Integer age
private int exp;    // to private Integer exp

So that you can use compareTo on age and exp

this.getAge().compareTo(o.getAge());
this.getExp().compareTo(o.getExp());

If not look at my solution below using the Integer.compare(int a, int b)

solution

@Override
public int compareTo(Employee o) {
    int result = this.getName().compareTo(o.getName());
    if (result == 0) {
        result = Integer.compare(this.getAge(), o.getAge());
        if (result == 0) {
            return Integer.compare(this.getExp(), o.getExp());
        }
        return result;
    }
    return result;
}