Thread: Ordering ArrayList by 3 conditions as you add to ArrayList

Let me restate the problem to see what you are trying to do.
You are adding objects to an ArrayList.
You want to add new objects in station, equipment, dept order so that the list is always ordered.

Seems you'd need a compare method that compares two objects and tells you if one goes before the other.

That would actually be the perfect way of doing it. Didnt think that about that...

To pile a bit more onto the plate, you could implement the Comparable or Comparator interface and perform your comparisons there. Doing so would allow you quite a bit more adaptability in that you could do full sorting of a List using the Collections.sort method if that is appropriate, or also allow you to create other types of Collections like a TreeSet or TreeMap which sort the elements upon insertion

Well, I continued the program without ordering the arraylists and it runs fast enough and correctly so I dont think I'll bother writing in an ordering sequence.