Custom List Implementation Example in Java

In this tutorial, I am giving an example implementation of List in java. Feel free to customize the behavior of list, by adding or removing methods from DemoList class. If you have some ideas to make this implementation better, please share with us.

Java List Implementation Example

In this class DemoList.java, we are creating a List implementation with following features:

• List may grow from zero to infinite size (at least theoretically).
• List will be initialized with minimum 10 elements at the time of creation.
• List will provide methods for fetching, adding, removing and printing the list at any state in its lifecycle.

Sourcecode of List Implementation

package com.howtodoinjava.datastructure;

import java.util.Arrays;

public class DataList<E> 
{
	//Size of list
	private int size = 0;
	
	//Default capacity of list is 10
	private static final int DEFAULT_CAPACITY = 10;
	
	//This array will store all elements added to list
	private Object elements[];

	//Default constructor
	public DataList() {
		elements = new Object[DEFAULT_CAPACITY];
	}

	//Add method
	public void add(E e) {
		if (size == elements.length) {
			ensureCapacity();
		}
		elements[size++] = e;
	}
	
	//Get method
	@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
	public E get(int i) {
		if (i >= size || i < 0) {
			throw new IndexOutOfBoundsException("Index: " + i + ", Size " + i);
		}
		return (E) elements[i];
	}
	
	//Remove method
	@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
	public E remove(int i) {
		if (i >= size || i < 0) {
			throw new IndexOutOfBoundsException("Index: " + i + ", Size " + i);
		}
		Object item = elements[i];
		int numElts = elements.length - ( i + 1 ) ;
		System.arraycopy( elements, i + 1, elements, i, numElts ) ;
		size--;
		return (E) item;
	}
	
	//Get Size of list
	public int size() {
		return size;
	}
	
	//Print method
	@Override
	public String toString() 
	{
		 StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
		 sb.append('[');
		 for(int i = 0; i < size ;i++) {
			 sb.append(elements[i].toString());
			 if(i<size-1){
				 sb.append(",");
			 }
		 }
		 sb.append(']');
		 return sb.toString();
	}
	
	private void ensureCapacity() {
		int newSize = elements.length * 2;
		elements = Arrays.copyOf(elements, newSize);
	}
}

Let’s quickly test out our List implementation.

package com.howtodoinjava.datastructure;

public class Main
{
	public static void main(String[] args) 
	{
		DataList<Integer> list = new DataList<>();

		//Add elements
		list.add(1);
		list.add(2);
		list.add(3);
		System.out.println(list);
		
		//Remove elements from index
		list.remove(2);
		System.out.println(list);
		
		//Get element with index
		System.out.println( list.get(0) );
		System.out.println( list.get(1) );

		//List Size
		System.out.println(list.size());
	}
}

Output:
[1,2,3,4,5]
[1,2,4,5]
1
2
4

As verified in above output, our list implementation is capable of providing all necessary features.

Happy Learning !!