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Baeldung Pro comes with both absolutely No-Ads as well as finally with Dark Mode, for a clean learning experience:

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Once the early-adopter seats are all used, the price will go up and stay at $33/year.

Partner – Microsoft – NPI EA (cat = Baeldung)
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Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Partner – Microsoft – NPI EA (cat= Spring Boot)
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Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, you can get started over on the documentation page.

And, you can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (cat=Spring)
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Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (tag=Microservices)
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Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

eBook – Guide Spring Cloud – NPI EA (cat=Spring Cloud)
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eBook – Mockito – NPI EA (tag = Mockito)
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Mocking is an essential part of unit testing, and the Mockito library makes it easy to write clean and intuitive unit tests for your Java code.

Get started with mocking and improve your application tests using our Mockito guide:

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eBook – Java Concurrency – NPI EA (cat=Java Concurrency)
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Handling concurrency in an application can be a tricky process with many potential pitfalls. A solid grasp of the fundamentals will go a long way to help minimize these issues.

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eBook – Reactive – NPI EA (cat=Reactive)
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Spring 5 added support for reactive programming with the Spring WebFlux module, which has been improved upon ever since. Get started with the Reactor project basics and reactive programming in Spring Boot:

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eBook – Java Streams – NPI EA (cat=Java Streams)
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Since its introduction in Java 8, the Stream API has become a staple of Java development. The basic operations like iterating, filtering, mapping sequences of elements are deceptively simple to use.

But these can also be overused and fall into some common pitfalls.

To get a better understanding on how Streams work and how to combine them with other language features, check out our guide to Java Streams:

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eBook – Jackson – NPI EA (cat=Jackson)
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Do JSON right with Jackson

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eBook – HTTP Client – NPI EA (cat=Http Client-Side)
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eBook – Persistence – NPI EA (cat=Persistence)
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eBook – RwS – NPI EA (cat=Spring MVC)
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Building a REST API with Spring?

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Course – LS – NPI EA (cat=Jackson)
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Get started with Spring and Spring Boot, through the Learn Spring course:

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Course – RWSB – NPI EA (cat=REST)
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Explore Spring Boot 3 and Spring 6 in-depth through building a full REST API with the framework:

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Course – LSS – NPI EA (cat=Spring Security)
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Yes, Spring Security can be complex, from the more advanced functionality within the Core to the deep OAuth support in the framework.

I built the security material as two full courses - Core and OAuth, to get practical with these more complex scenarios. We explore when and how to use each feature and code through it on the backing project.

You can explore the course here:

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Course – All Access – NPI EA (cat= Spring)
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All Access is finally out, with all of my Spring courses. Learn JUnit is out as well, and Learn Maven is coming fast. And, of course, quite a bit more affordable. Finally.

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Course – LSD – NPI EA (tag=Spring Data JPA)
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Spring Data JPA is a great way to handle the complexity of JPA with the powerful simplicity of Spring Boot.

Get started with Spring Data JPA through the guided reference course:

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Partner – LambdaTest – NPI EA (cat=Testing)
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End-to-end testing is a very useful method to make sure that your application works as intended. This highlights issues in the overall functionality of the software, that the unit and integration test stages may miss.

Playwright is an easy-to-use, but powerful tool that automates end-to-end testing, and supports all modern browsers and platforms.

When coupled with LambdaTest (an AI-powered cloud-based test execution platform) it can be further scaled to run the Playwright scripts in parallel across 3000+ browser and device combinations:

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Course – Spring Sale 2025 – NPI EA (cat= Baeldung)
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Course – Spring Sale 2025 – NPI (cat=Baeldung)
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Yes, we're now running our Spring Sale. All Courses are 25% off until 26th May, 2025:

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1. Introduction

An Iterator is one of many ways we can traverse a collection, and as every option, it has its pros and cons.

It was first introduced in Java 1.2 as a replacement of Enumerations and:

In this tutorial, we’re going to review the simple Iterator interface to learn how we can use its different methods.

We’ll also check the more robust ListIterator extension which adds some interesting functionality.

2. The Iterator Interface

To start, we need to obtain an Iterator from a Collection; this is done by calling the iterator() method.

For simplicity, we’ll obtain Iterator instance from a list:

List<String> items = ...
Iterator<String> iter = items.iterator();

The Iterator interface has three core methods:

2.1. hasNext()

The hasNext() method can be used for checking if there’s at least one element left to iterate over.

It’s designed to be used as a condition in while loops:

while (iter.hasNext()) {
    // ...
}

2.2. next()

The next() method can be used for stepping over the next element and obtaining it:

String next = iter.next();

It’s good practice to use hasNext() before attempting to call next().

Iterators for Collections don’t guarantee iteration in any particular order unless particular implementation provides it.

2.3. remove()

Finally, if we want to remove the current element from the collection, we can use the remove:

iter.remove();

This is a safe way to remove elements while iterating over a collection without a risk of a ConcurrentModificationException.

2.4. Full Iterator Example

Now we can combine them all and have a look at how we use the three methods together for collection filtering:

while (iter.hasNext()) {
    String next = iter.next();
    System.out.println(next);
 
    if( "TWO".equals(next)) {
        iter.remove();				
    }
}

This is how we commonly use an Iterator, we check ahead of time if there is another element, we retrieve it and then we perform some action on it.

2.5. Iterating With Lambda Expressions

As we saw in the previous examples, it’s very verbose to use an Iterator when we just want to go over all the elements and do something with them.

Since Java 8, we have the forEachRemaining method that allows the use of lambdas to processing remaining elements:

iter.forEachRemaining(System.out::println);

3. The ListIterator Interface

ListIterator is an extension that adds new functionality for iterating over lists:

ListIterator<String> listIterator = items.listIterator(items.size());

Notice how we can provide a starting position which in this case is the end of the List.

3.1. hasPrevious() and previous()

ListIterator can be used for backward traversal so it provides equivalents of hasNext() and next():

while(listIterator.hasPrevious()) {
    String previous = listIterator.previous();
}

3.2. nextIndex() and previousIndex()

Additionally, we can traverse over indices and not actual elements:

String nextWithIndex = items.get(listIterator.nextIndex());
String previousWithIndex = items.get(listIterator.previousIndex());

This could prove very useful in case we need to know the indexes of the objects we’re currently modifying, or if we want to keep a record of removed elements.

3.3. add()

The add method, which, as the name suggests, allows us to add an element before the item that would be returned by next() and after the one returned by previous():

listIterator.add("FOUR");

3.4. set()

The last method worth mentioning is set(), which lets us replace the element that was returned in the call to next() or previous():

String next = listIterator.next();
if( "ONE".equals(next)) {
    listIterator.set("SWAPPED");
}

It’s important to note that this can only be executed if no prior calls to add() or remove() were made.

3.5. Full ListIterator Example

We can now combine them all to make a complete example:

ListIterator<String> listIterator = items.listIterator();
while(listIterator.hasNext()) {
    String nextWithIndex = items.get(listIterator.nextIndex());		
    String next = listIterator.next();
    if("REPLACE ME".equals(next)) {
        listIterator.set("REPLACED");
    }
}
listIterator.add("NEW");
while(listIterator.hasPrevious()) {
    String previousWithIndex
     = items.get(listIterator.previousIndex());
    String previous = listIterator.previous();
    System.out.println(previous);
}

In this example, we start by getting the ListIterator from the List, then we can obtain the next element either by index –which doesn’t increase the iterator’s internal current element – or by calling next.

Then we can replace a specific item with set and insert a new one with add.

After reaching the end of the iteration, we can go backward to modify additional elements or simply print them from bottom to top.

4. Conclusion

The Iterator interface allows us to modify a collection while traversing it, which is more difficult with a simple for/while statement. This, in turn, gives us a good pattern we can use in many methods that only requires collections processing while maintaining good cohesion and low coupling.

The code backing this article is available on GitHub. Once you're logged in as a Baeldung Pro Member, start learning and coding on the project.
Baeldung Pro – NPI EA (cat = Baeldung)
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Baeldung Pro comes with both absolutely No-Ads as well as finally with Dark Mode, for a clean learning experience:

>> Explore a clean Baeldung

Once the early-adopter seats are all used, the price will go up and stay at $33/year.

Partner – Microsoft – NPI EA (cat = Spring Boot)
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Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (cat = Spring)
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Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (tag = Microservices)
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Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

eBook – HTTP Client – NPI EA (cat=HTTP Client-Side)
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The Apache HTTP Client is a very robust library, suitable for both simple and advanced use cases when testing HTTP endpoints. Check out our guide covering basic request and response handling, as well as security, cookies, timeouts, and more:

>> Download the eBook

eBook – Java Concurrency – NPI EA (cat=Java Concurrency)
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Handling concurrency in an application can be a tricky process with many potential pitfalls. A solid grasp of the fundamentals will go a long way to help minimize these issues.

Get started with understanding multi-threaded applications with our Java Concurrency guide:

>> Download the eBook

eBook – Java Streams – NPI EA (cat=Java Streams)
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Since its introduction in Java 8, the Stream API has become a staple of Java development. The basic operations like iterating, filtering, mapping sequences of elements are deceptively simple to use.

But these can also be overused and fall into some common pitfalls.

To get a better understanding on how Streams work and how to combine them with other language features, check out our guide to Java Streams:

>> Join Pro and download the eBook

eBook – Persistence – NPI EA (cat=Persistence)
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Working on getting your persistence layer right with Spring?

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Course – LS – NPI EA (cat=REST)

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Get started with Spring Boot and with core Spring, through the Learn Spring course:

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Course – Spring Sale 2025 – NPI EA (cat= Baeldung)
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Yes, we're now running our Spring Sale. All Courses are 25% off until 26th May, 2025:

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Course – Spring Sale 2025 – NPI (All)
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Yes, we're now running our Spring Sale. All Courses are 25% off until 26th May, 2025:

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eBook Jackson – NPI EA – 3 (cat = Jackson)