Sorting by values in HashMap class using Java

You can sort the entries as follows (but note this won't sort the map itself, and also HashMap cannot be sorted) -

List<Map.Entry<String, Integer>> entryList = new ArrayList<Map.Entry<String, Integer>>(map.entrySet());
Collections.sort(entryList, new Comparator<Map.Entry<String, Integer>>() {
    @Override
    public int compare(Entry<String, Integer> o1, Entry<String, Integer> o2) {
        return o1.getValue().compareTo(o2.getValue());
    }
});

You cannot do that from a Map. At least not directly.

Retrieve the keys/entries, get all the map data in a more suitable structure (hint: a class that encapsulates both attributes and is is stored in a sortable (hint2: SortedSet, List)) and sort.

Do not forget to extend Comparable (and implement compareTo) or, otherwise, create a Comparator.

This is one of the solutions take from: http://stackoverflow.com/a/13913206/1256583

Just pass in the unsorted map, and you'll get the sorted one.

private static Map<String, Integer> sortByComparator(Map<String, Integer> unsortMap, final boolean order) {

    List<Entry<String, Integer>> list = new LinkedList<Entry<String, Integer>>(unsortMap.entrySet());

    // Sorting the list based on values
    Collections.sort(list, new Comparator<Entry<String, Integer>>() {
        public int compare(Entry<String, Integer> o1, Entry<String, Integer> o2) {
            if (order) {
                return o1.getValue().compareTo(o2.getValue());
            }
            else {
                return o2.getValue().compareTo(o1.getValue());

            }
        }
    });

    // Maintaining insertion order with the help of LinkedList
    Map<String, Integer> sortedMap = new LinkedHashMap<String, Integer>();
    for (Entry<String, Integer> entry : list) {
        sortedMap.put(entry.getKey(), entry.getValue());
    }

    return sortedMap;
}

To print, do a simple iteration over the entry set:

public static void printMap(Map<String, Integer> map) {
    for (Entry<String, Integer> entry : map.entrySet()) {
        System.out.println("Key : " + entry.getKey() + " Value : "+ entry.getValue());
    }
}

You probably have the wrong data structure for this problem. Either:

1. Reverse the map so the integers are the keys and the words the values and make the map a SortedMap, or
2. Use a bidirectional map as provided by libraries like Google Guava.

Reversed Map

private final SortedMap<Integer, String> TRANSLATIONS;
static {
    SortedMap<Integer, String> map = new TreeMap<>();
    map.put(1, "can");
    // ...
    TRANSLATIONS = Collections.unmodifiableSortedMap(map);
}

Guava BiMap

private final BiMap TRANSLATIONS =
   new ImmutableBiMap.Builder<String, Integer>()
        .put("ertu", 5);
        .put("burak", 4);
        .put("selin", 2);
        .put("can", 1);
        .build();

Then, iterate over a sorted version of the key set or value set as needed. For example,

TRANSLATIONS.inverse.get(4); // "burak"

I'm just curious. What language are your strings in?