This example demonstrate how to find specific items in array. We will use the org.apache.commons.lang.ArrayUtils class. This class provides method called contains(Object[] array, Object objectToFind) method to check if an array contains the objectToFind in it.

We can also use the indexOf(Object[] array, Object objectToFind) method and the lastIndexOf(Object[] array, Object objectToFind) method to get the index of an array element where our objectToFind is located.

package org.kodejava.example.commons.lang;

import org.apache.commons.lang.ArrayUtils;

public class ArrayUtilsIndexOfDemo {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String[] colours = { "Red", "Orange", "Yellow", "Green",
            "Blue", "Violet", "Orange", "Blue" };

        // Does colours array contains the Blue colour?
        boolean contains = ArrayUtils.contains(colours, "Blue");
        System.out.println("Contains Blue? " + contains);

        // Can you tell me the index of each colour defined bellow?
        int indexOfYellow = ArrayUtils.indexOf(colours, "Yellow");
        System.out.println("indexOfYellow = " + indexOfYellow);

        int indexOfOrange = ArrayUtils.indexOf(colours, "Orange");
        System.out.println("indexOfOrange = " + indexOfOrange);

        int lastIndexOfOrange = ArrayUtils.lastIndexOf(colours, "Orange");
        System.out.println("lastIndexOfOrange = " + lastIndexOfOrange);
    }
}

Here are the result of the code above.

Contains Blue? true
indexOfYellow = 2
indexOfOrange = 1
lastIndexOfOrange = 6

Maven Dependencies

<!-- http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/commons-lang/commons-lang/2.6/commons-lang-2.6.jar -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>commons-lang</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-lang</artifactId>
    <version>2.6</version>
</dependency>

• About
• Latest Posts

Wayan Saryada

Programmer, runner, recreational diver, currently living in the island of Bali, Indonesia. Mostly programming in Java, creating web based application with Spring Framework, Hibernate / JPA.

Latest posts by Wayan Saryada (see all)

• How to format LocalDate object using Jackson? - February 16, 2017
• How to pretty print JSON string using Jackson? - February 15, 2017
• How to convert java.time.LocalDate to java.util.Date? - February 14, 2017