ArrayList get() – Getting Element at Index

Learn to get an element from an ArrayList using its index position. We will be using ArrayList.get() method to get the object at the specified index of the arraylist.

ArrayList<String> list = //List instance

String firstElement = list.get(0);         
String sixthElement = list.get(5);       

1. ArrayList get() Method

ArrayList.get(int index) method returns the element at the specified position 'index' in the list.

1.1. Syntax

public Object get( int index );

1.2. Method Parameter

index – index of the element to return. A valid index is always be between 0 (inclusive) to the size of ArrayList (exclusive).

For example, if ArrayList holds 10 objects then a valid argument index will be between 0 to 9 (both inclusive).

1.3. Return Value

The get() method returns the reference of the object present at the specified index.

1.4. IndexOutOfBoundsException

An invalid index argument will cause IndexOutOfBoundsException error.

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsException: Index: 4, Size: 4
	at java.util.ArrayList.rangeCheck(ArrayList.java:653)
	at java.util.ArrayList.get(ArrayList.java:429)
	at com.howtodoinjava.example.ArrayListExample.main(ArrayListExample.java:12)

2. ArrayList get() Example

Java program for how to get an object from ArrayList by its index location. In this example, we want to get the object stored at index locations 0 and 1.

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;

public class ArrayListExample 
{
    public static void main(String[] args) 
    {
        ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<>(Arrays
                    .asList("alex", "brian", "charles", "dough"));
        
        String firstName = list.get(0);         //alex
        String secondName = list.get(1);        //brian
        
        System.out.println(firstName);
        System.out.println(secondName);
    }
}

Program output.

alex
brian

Happy Learning !!