Lakmali Erandi Baminiwatta’s blog

In my previous post , I described about Lamda expression and its usages. Now I am going to write about method references in Java 8. What is a method reference? As I described in my previous post , a lamda expression is an anonymous function. However, sometimes lamda expression is only calling an existing method. On the other hand, if the function code in the lamda expression is too complicated or has many lines, it makes sense to include it in a separate method. This is when method references comes in handy. Instead of writing a lamda expression, we can refer to an existing method. Based on the method type, there are 4 types of method reference syntax. Type Syntax Reference to a static method ContainingClass::staticMethodName Reference to an instance method of a particular object containingObject::instanceMethodName Reference to an instance method of an arbitrary object of a particular type ContainingType::methodName

Lamda expression in Java was introduced in Java 8. This is one of my favorite, cool features of Java 8. This blog is intended to help understanding what is it, where and how can we use it. What is lamda expression? In simple words, Lamda expression in java is an anonymous function. It is defined with the parameter list and the function body. Below is the syntax of lamda expression. { parameter list } -> { function body } So what is actually meant by this definition? Although we define an anonymous function here, this is actually like an implementation to a method in an interface. Also, we can assign this lamda expression to a reference of the interface type. See example below. interface MyInterface { public String sayWelcome ( String name ); } public class LamdaExpSample { public static void main ( String args []) { MyInterface myIn = ( name ) -> { return "Welcome " + name ; }; } }