JAVA 8 NEW FEATURES
Oracle released a new version of Java as Java 8 in March 18, 2014. It was a revolutionary release of the Java for software development platform. It includes various upgrades to the Java programming, JVM, Tools and libraries.
- Lambda Expressions
- Stream API
- Default Methods
- Functional Interfaces
- Optional Class
- Date and Time API
- Parallel Array Sorting
- Method References
- Completable Future
Lambda Expressions
Lambda expression helps us to write our code in functional style. It provides a clear and concise way to implement SAM interface(Single Abstract Method) by using an expression. It is very useful in collection library in which it helps to iterate, filter and extract data.
Stream API
Java 8 java.util.stream package consists of classes, interfaces and an enum to allow functional-style operations on the elements. It performs lazy computation. So, it executes only when it requires.
Default Methods
Java provides a facility to create default methods inside the interface. Methods which are defined inside the interface and tagged with default keyword are known as default methods. These methods are non-abstract methods and can have method body.
Functional Interface
An Interface that contains only one abstract method is known as functional interface. It can have any number of default and static methods. It can also declare methods of object class.
Functional interfaces are also known as Single Abstract Method Interfaces (SAM Interfaces).
Optional
Java introduced a new class Optional in Java 8. It is a public final class which is used to deal with NullPointerException in Java application. We must import java.util package to use this class. It provides methods to check the presence of value for particular variable.
Date/Time API
Java has introduced a new Date and Time API since Java 8. The java.time package contains Java 8 Date and Time classes.
Java Parallel Array Sorting
Java provides a new additional feature in Arrays class which is used to sort array elements parallelly. The parallelSort() method has added to java.util.Arrays class that uses the JSR 166 Fork/Join parallelism common pool to provide sorting of arrays. It is an overloaded method.
Method References
Java 8 Method reference is used to refer method of functional interface . It is compact and easy form of lambda expression. Each time when you are using lambda expression to just referring a method, you can replace your lambda expression with method reference.
CompletableFuture
CompletableFuture is a feature introduced in Java 8 that provides a way to perform asynchronous computations and handle their results. It is part of the java.util.concurrent package and serves as an enhancement to the Future interface, allowing developers to write concurrent and non-blocking code more easily.