使用不同的标准对树集中的元素进行排序和区分

Question

Extreme Java newbie here. I'm doing some simple excercises in order to get some practice with the basic concepts of the language.

One of these exercises asks me to implement a MusicAlbum class which, among other things, has as one of its instance attributes a list of instances of class MusicTrack.

Since every MusicTrack must be uniquely identified by its id, and considering that it is specified that said list must be "sorted" (although there's no real indication about it), I opted for a TreeSet.

So I've implemented Comparable in the MusicTrack class so that the MusicAlbum's set will be sorted by the ids of the MusicTrack's instances which it contains. Also, two MusicTrack instances with the same id will be considered the same MusicTrack instance and then there won't be duplicates within the treeset. So far so good (or at least I think so).

The problem arises when the exercise asks to make the MusicAlbum class iterable in a decreasing order of duration (which is another attribute of the MusicTrack class).

I've immediately thought to modify the compareTo method so that the sorting of the treeset would instead be organised by duration, while an overriding of the equals method of class Object would still guarantee uniqueness by id. However, this did not work, it seems like the existence of the compareTo method makes the equals method completely irrelevant.

So here's my question: is it possible to sort a treeset with a criteria and to mantain uniqueness within that same treeset with a completely different criteria?

I've found this quote that might suggests that such thing, if even possible, is still not recommended:

Note that the ordering maintained by a sorted map (whether or not an explicit comparator is provided) must be consistent with equals if this sorted map is to correctly implement the Map interface. (See Comparable or Comparator for a precise definition of consistent with equals.) This is so because the Map interface is defined in terms of the equals operation, but a map performs all key comparisons using its compareTo (or compare) method, so two keys that are deemed equal by this method are, from the standpoint of the sorted map, equal. The behavior of a sorted map is well-defined even if its ordering is inconsistent with equals; it just fails to obey the general contract of the Map interface.

However the infos I've found about this was pretty confusing to me, so I'm asking for clarifications.

Also what could be a good way to solve this exercise? Of course, here's what I managed to do so far:

MusicTrack.java

public class MusicTrack implements Comparable<MusicTrack> {

    private static int nextId = 0;

    private int id;
    private String title;
    private String author;
    private int duration;

    @SuppressWarnings("serial")
    public class NegativeDurationException extends Exception {

        public NegativeDurationException() {

            System.err.println("Duration value must be greater than 0.");
        }
    }

    public MusicTrack(String title, String author, int duration) throws NegativeDurationException {

        if(duration < 1) {

            throw new NegativeDurationException();
        }
        else {

            this.id = nextId++;
            this.title = title;
            this.author = author;
            this.duration = duration;
        }
    }

    public int getId() {

        return this.id;
    }

    public String getTitle() {

        return this.title;
    }

    public void setTitle(String title) {

        this.title = title;
    }

    public String getAuthor() {

        return this.author;
    }

    public void setAuthor(String author) {

        this.author = author;
    }

    public int getDuration() {

        return this.duration;
    }

    public void setDuration(int duration) {

        this.duration = duration;
    }

    public String toString() {

        return "Id: " + this.id  + "\nAuthor: " + this.author + "\nTitle: " + this.title + "\nDuration: " + this.duration + "\n";
    }

    @Override
    public int compareTo(MusicTrack track) {

        return this.id - track.id;
    }
}

MusicAlbum.java

import java.text.ParseException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.Set;
import java.util.TreeSet;

public class MusicAlbum implements Iterable<MusicTrack> {

    public enum PhysicalMedia {

        VYNIL, CD, USB
    }

    private static int nextId = 0;

    private int id;
    private String title;
    private String author;
    private Date purchaseTime;
    private Set<MusicTrack> tracks;
    private PhysicalMedia physicalMedia;

    public MusicAlbum(String title, String author, String purchaseTime, PhysicalMedia physicalMedia) {

        try {

            this.purchaseTime = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/mm/yyyy").parse(purchaseTime);
        } 
        catch (ParseException e) {

            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        this.id = nextId++;
        this.title = title;
        this.author = author;
        this.physicalMedia = physicalMedia;
        this.tracks = new TreeSet<MusicTrack>();
    }

    public void addMusicTracks(MusicTrack ... tracks) {

        for(MusicTrack track: tracks) {

            this.tracks.add(track);
        }
    }

    public boolean contains(MusicTrack track) {

        return this.tracks.contains(track);
    }

    public int getTotalDuration() {

        Iterator<MusicTrack> i = this.tracks.iterator();
        int totalDuration = 0;

        while(i.hasNext()) {

            totalDuration += i.next().getDuration();
        }

        return totalDuration;
    }

    public String toString() {

        return "Id: " + this.id + "\nDate: " + this.purchaseTime.toString() + "\nTotal duration: " + this.getTotalDuration();
    }


    @Override
    public Iterator<MusicTrack> iterator() {

        return this.tracks.iterator();
    }

}

Answer 1

1. Write a duration comparator.

class DurationComparator implements Comparator<MusicTrack> {

    @Override
    public int compare(MusicTrack o1, MusicTrack o2) {
        int d1 = o1 == null ? 0 : o1.getDuration();
        int d2 = o2 == null ? 0 : o2.getDuration();
        return d2 - d1;
    }
}

2. Change method iterator() in class MusicAlbum

public Iterator<MusicTrack> iterator() {
    TreeSet<MusicTrack> temp = new TreeSet<MusicTrack>(new DurationComparator());
    temp.addAll(tracks);
    return temp.iterator();
}

Now the iterator lists the tracks in order of decreasing duration, whereas simply listing the tracks displays them in order of ID.

Demonstrating code.
(Note that I added method getTracks() to class MusicAlbum that returns tracks member.)

public static void main(String[] args) throws NegativeDurationException {
    MusicAlbum album = new MusicAlbum("title", "author", "03/10/2003", PhysicalMedia.CD);
    MusicTrack track1 = new MusicTrack("title_1", "author_1", 30);
    MusicTrack track2 = new MusicTrack("title_2", "author_2", 40);
    MusicTrack track3 = new MusicTrack("title_3", "author_3", 10);
    MusicTrack track4 = new MusicTrack("title_4", "author_4", 20);
    album.addMusicTracks(track1, track2, track3, track4);
    Iterator<MusicTrack> iter = album.iterator();
    while (iter.hasNext()) {
        System.out.println(iter.next());
    }
    System.out.println("====================================================================");
    album.getTracks().forEach(System.out::println);
}

Output of above main() method:

Id: 1
Author: author_2
Title: title_2
Duration: 40

Id: 0
Author: author_1
Title: title_1
Duration: 30

Id: 3
Author: author_4
Title: title_4
Duration: 20

Id: 2
Author: author_3
Title: title_3
Duration: 10

====================================================================
Id: 0
Author: author_1
Title: title_1
Duration: 30

Id: 1
Author: author_2
Title: title_2
Duration: 40

Id: 2
Author: author_3
Title: title_3
Duration: 10

Id: 3
Author: author_4
Title: title_4
Duration: 20

EDIT

Due to your comment, @Gian, I realize that you need a list iterator and not a set because there may be two or more MusicTrack s with the same duration. Hence method iterator() in class MusicAlbum becomes:

public Iterator<MusicTrack> iterator() {
    List<MusicTrack> temp = new ArrayList<MusicTrack>();
    temp.addAll(tracks);
    Collections.sort(temp, new DurationComparator());
    return temp.iterator();
}

Now see what happens when you list the tracks of an album where two or more tracks have the same duration.