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How to Use Java 8 Streams Skip() and Limit() Operation 

  • Post last modified:December 15, 2022
  • Reading time:3 mins read

Introduction

  • Java 8 provides Streams API , that converts collection type to stream type. Once we have Stream, we can perform N number of operations on it that is defined in Streams API.
  • In this blog we will focus on skip() and limit() methods.

Skip()

  • Skip operation is useful when we want to discard some number elements from actual collection.
  • If we 100 elements and we want to skip first 10 elements then we can just pass 10 as number to skip(10).
Stream<T> skip(long n)
- Returns a stream consisting of the remaining elements of this stream after discarding the first n elements of the stream. 
- If this stream contains fewer than n elements then an empty stream will be returned.

Limit()

  • Limit would be truncated to the provided maxSize, means we will get maxSize number of elements from totalElements.
Stream<T> limit(long maxSize)
Returns a stream consisting of the elements of this stream, truncated to be no longer than maxSize in length.

Use Case

  • Let’s say we have file with below contents. Generally files consist of some header and footer that provides metadata of the file. I have seen this kind of structure in financial domain where we transfer file along with some metadata as header and footer. 
  • Header generally specify schema and data time, while Footer specifies total number of records.
  • Our goal is to filter the header , footer and file content .

Use of Skip() & Limit()

  • Step1: Read file as List of string using Java.nio utility and print the content.
List<String> fullFileContent = Files.readAllLines(Path.of("/Users/suraj.mishra/Desktop/demo.txt"));
fullFileContent.stream().forEach(a-> System.out.println(a));
System.out.println("-------------------");
  • Now lets convert List of string to stream using stream() method  skip header by passing skip(1).
List<String> contentWithFooter = fullFileContent
                .stream()
                .skip(1)
                .collect(Collectors.toList());
  • Now we have content with footer, we have skipped header .
  • Next we will use limit() to only filter content and not the footer. Here contentWithFooter.size() only get fileContent and doesn’t allow the footer which is last entry.
List<String> justContent = contentWithFooter
                .stream()
                .limit(contentWithFooter.size() - 1)
                .collect(Collectors.toList());
        justContent.stream().forEach(a-> System.out.println(a));
        System.out.println("-------------------");
  • We can verify our result easily by printing the filtered content.
  • We can use entire skip and limit operations in single chained operation as below.
  • Reason we are using fullFileContent.size()-2 here is because this list contains header as well, hence subtracting (total — (header+footer ))
List<String> filContents = fullFileContent
                .stream()
                .skip(1)
                .limit(fullFileContent.size() - 2)
                .collect(Collectors.toList());

filContents.stream().forEach(a-> System.out.println(a));

Conclusion

  • In this blog we discuss practical application of Stream API’s Skip() and Limit() operation .
  • They can be used together to operate on our collection more effectively .

Bonus Tip

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