Merging Streams in Java

Last updated: March 27, 2025

Written by: baeldung

Reviewed by: Zeger Hendrikse

Java Streams

Java Stream Basics

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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:

>> Automated End-to-End Testing With Playwright

1. Overview

In this quick article, we explain different ways of merging Java Streams – which is not a very intuitive operation.

2. Using Plain Java

The JDK 8 Stream class has some useful static utility methods. Let’s take a closer look at the concat() method.

2.1. Merging Two Streams

The simplest way to combine 2 Streams is to use the static Stream.concat() method:

@Test
public void whenMergingStreams_thenResultStreamContainsElementsFromBoth() {
    Stream<Integer> stream1 = Stream.of(1, 3, 5);
    Stream<Integer> stream2 = Stream.of(2, 4, 6);

    Stream<Integer> resultingStream = Stream.concat(stream1, stream2);

    assertEquals(
      Arrays.asList(1, 3, 5, 2, 4, 6),
      resultingStream.collect(Collectors.toList()));
}

**2.2. Merging Multiple Streams**

When we need to merge more than 2 Streams, things become a bit more complex. One possibility is to concatenate the first two streams, then concatenate the result with the next one and so on.

The next code snippet shows this in action:

@Test
public void given3Streams_whenMerged_thenResultStreamContainsAllElements() {
    Stream<Integer> stream1 = Stream.of(1, 3, 5);
    Stream<Integer> stream2 = Stream.of(2, 4, 6);
    Stream<Integer> stream3 = Stream.of(18, 15, 36);

    Stream<Integer> resultingStream = Stream.concat(
      Stream.concat(stream1, stream2), stream3);

    assertEquals(
      Arrays.asList(1, 3, 5, 2, 4, 6, 18, 15, 36),
      resultingStream.collect(Collectors.toList()));
}

As we can see, this approach becomes unfeasible for more streams. Of course, we can create intermediate variables or helper methods to make it more readable, but here is a better option:

@Test
public void given4Streams_whenMerged_thenResultStreamContainsAllElements() {
    Stream<Integer> stream1 = Stream.of(1, 3, 5);
    Stream<Integer> stream2 = Stream.of(2, 4, 6);
    Stream<Integer> stream3 = Stream.of(18, 15, 36);
    Stream<Integer> stream4 = Stream.of(99);

    Stream<Integer> resultingStream = Stream.of(
      stream1, stream2, stream3, stream4)
      .flatMap(i -> i);

    assertEquals(
      Arrays.asList(1, 3, 5, 2, 4, 6, 18, 15, 36, 99),
      resultingStream.collect(Collectors.toList()));
}

What happens here is:

We first create a new Stream containing the 4 Streams, which results in a Stream<Stream<Integer>>
Then we flatMap() this into a Stream<Integer> using the identity function

3. Using StreamEx

StreamEx is an open-source Java library that extends possibilities of Java 8 Streams. It uses the StreamEx class as an enhancement to the JDK’s Stream interface.

**3.1. Merging Streams**

The StreamEx library allows us to merge streams using the append() instance method:

@Test
public void given4Streams_whenMerged_thenResultStreamContainsAllElements() {
    Stream<Integer> stream1 = Stream.of(1, 3, 5);
    Stream<Integer> stream2 = Stream.of(2, 4, 6);
    Stream<Integer> stream3 = Stream.of(18, 15, 36);
    Stream<Integer> stream4 = Stream.of(99);

    Stream<Integer> resultingStream = StreamEx.of(stream1)
      .append(stream2)
      .append(stream3)
      .append(stream4);

    assertEquals(
      Arrays.asList(1, 3, 5, 2, 4, 6, 18, 15, 36, 99),
      resultingStream.collect(Collectors.toList()));
}

Since it is an instance method, we can easily chain it and append multiple streams.

Note that we could also create a List out of the stream by using toList() if we type the resultingStream variable to the StreamEx type.

3.2. Merging Streams Using prepend()

StreamEx also contains a method that adds elements before one another called prepend():

@Test
public void given3Streams_whenPrepended_thenResultStreamContainsAllElements() {
    Stream<String> stream1 = Stream.of("foo", "bar");
    Stream<String> openingBracketStream = Stream.of("[");
    Stream<String> closingBracketStream = Stream.of("]");

    Stream<String> resultingStream = StreamEx.of(stream1)
      .append(closingBracketStream)
      .prepend(openingBracketStream);

    assertEquals(
      Arrays.asList("[", "foo", "bar", "]"),
      resultingStream.collect(Collectors.toList()));
}

4. Using Jooλ

jOOλ is a JDK 8 compatible library that provides useful extensions to the JDK. The most important stream abstraction here is called Seq. Note that this is a sequential and ordered stream, so calling parallel() will have no effect.

4.1. Merging Streams

Just like the StreamEx library, jOOλ has an append() method:

@Test
public void given2Streams_whenMerged_thenResultStreamContainsAllElements() {
    Stream<Integer> seq1 = Stream.of(1, 3, 5);
    Stream<Integer> seq2 = Stream.of(2, 4, 6);

    Stream<Integer> resultingSeq = Seq.ofType(seq1, Integer.class)
      .append(seq2);

    assertEquals(
      Arrays.asList(1, 3, 5, 2, 4, 6),
      resultingSeq.collect(Collectors.toList()));
}

Also, there is a convenience toList() method if we type the resultingSeq variable to the jOOλ Seq type.

4.2. Merging Streams With prepend()

As expected, since an append() method exists, there is also a prepend() method in jOOλ:

@Test
public void given3Streams_whenPrepending_thenResultStreamContainsAllElements() {
    Stream<String> seq = Stream.of("foo", "bar");
    Stream<String> openingBracketSeq = Stream.of("[");
    Stream<String> closingBracketSeq = Stream.of("]");

    Stream<String> resultingStream = Seq.ofType(seq, String.class)
      .append(closingBracketSeq)
      .prepend(openingBracketSeq);

    Assert.assertEquals(
      Arrays.asList("[", "foo", "bar", "]"),
      resultingStream.collect(Collectors.toList()));
}

5. Conclusion

We saw that merging streams is relatively straightforward using JDK 8. When we need to do a lot of merging, it might be beneficial to use the StreamEx or jOOλ library for the sake of readability.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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