Java - Ring Buffer

Question

I have a streaming time series, of which I am interested in keeping the last 4 elements, which means I want to be able to pop the first, and add to the end. Which Java Collection is the best for this? Vector ?

Answer 1

A very interesting project is disruptor. It has a ringbuffer and is used from what I know in financial applications.

See here: code of ringbuffer

I checked both Guava's EvictingQueue and ArrayDeque.

ArrayDeque does not limit growth if it's full it will double size and hence is not precisely acting like a ringbuffer.

EvictingQueue does what it promises but internally uses a Deque to store things and just bounds memory.

Hence, if you care about memory being bounded ArrayDeque is not fullfilling your promise. If you care about object count EvictingQueue uses internal composition (bigger object size).

A simple and memory efficient one can be stolen from jmonkeyengine. verbatim copy

import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.NoSuchElementException;

public class RingBuffer<T> implements Iterable<T> {

  private T[] buffer;          // queue elements
  private int count = 0;          // number of elements on queue
  private int indexOut = 0;       // index of first element of queue
  private int indexIn = 0;       // index of next available slot

  // cast needed since no generic array creation in Java
  public RingBuffer(int capacity) {
    buffer = (T[]) new Object[capacity];
  }

  public boolean isEmpty() {
    return count == 0;
  }

  public int size() {
    return count;
  }

  public void push(T item) {
    if (count == buffer.length) {
        throw new RuntimeException("Ring buffer overflow");
    }
    buffer[indexIn] = item;
    indexIn = (indexIn + 1) % buffer.length;     // wrap-around
    count++;
  }

  public T pop() {
    if (isEmpty()) {
        throw new RuntimeException("Ring buffer underflow");
    }
    T item = buffer[indexOut];
    buffer[indexOut] = null;                  // to help with garbage collection
    count--;
    indexOut = (indexOut + 1) % buffer.length; // wrap-around
    return item;
  }

  public Iterator<T> iterator() {
    return new RingBufferIterator();
  }

  // an iterator, doesn't implement remove() since it's optional
  private class RingBufferIterator implements Iterator<T> {

    private int i = 0;

    public boolean hasNext() {
        return i < count;
    }

    public void remove() {
        throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
    }

    public T next() {
        if (!hasNext()) {
            throw new NoSuchElementException();
        }
        return buffer[i++];
    }
  }
}

Answer 2

I had the same problem some time ago and was disappointed because I couldn't find any solution that suites my needs so I wrote my own class. Honestly, I did found some code back then, but even that wasn't what I was searching for so I adapted it and now I'm sharing it, just like the author of that piece of code did.

EDIT: This is the original (although slightly different) code: CircularArrayList for java

I don't have the link of the source because it was time ago, but here's the code:

import java.util.AbstractList;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.RandomAccess;

public class CircularArrayList<E> extends AbstractList<E> implements RandomAccess {

private final int n; // buffer length
private final List<E> buf; // a List implementing RandomAccess
private int leader = 0;
private int size = 0;


public CircularArrayList(int capacity) {
    n = capacity + 1;
    buf = new ArrayList<E>(Collections.nCopies(n, (E) null));
}

public int capacity() {
    return n - 1;
}

private int wrapIndex(int i) {
    int m = i % n;
    if (m < 0) { // modulus can be negative
        m += n;
    }
    return m;
}

@Override
public int size() {
    return this.size;
}

@Override
public E get(int i) {
    if (i < 0 || i >= n-1) throw new IndexOutOfBoundsException();

    if(i > size()) throw new NullPointerException("Index is greater than size.");

    return buf.get(wrapIndex(leader + i));
}

@Override
public E set(int i, E e) {
    if (i < 0 || i >= n-1) {
        throw new IndexOutOfBoundsException();
    }
    if(i == size()) // assume leader's position as invalid (should use insert(e))
        throw new IndexOutOfBoundsException("The size of the list is " + size() + " while the index was " + i
                +". Please use insert(e) method to fill the list.");
    return buf.set(wrapIndex(leader - size + i), e);
}

public void insert(E e)
{
    int s = size();     
    buf.set(wrapIndex(leader), e);
    leader = wrapIndex(++leader);
    buf.set(leader, null);
    if(s == n-1)
        return; // we have replaced the eldest element.
    this.size++;

}

@Override
public void clear()
{
    int cnt = wrapIndex(leader-size());
    for(; cnt != leader; cnt = wrapIndex(++cnt))
        this.buf.set(cnt, null);
    this.size = 0;      
}

public E removeOldest() {
    int i = wrapIndex(leader+1);

    for(;;i = wrapIndex(++i)) {
        if(buf.get(i) != null) break;
        if(i == leader)
            throw new IllegalStateException("Cannot remove element."
                    + " CircularArrayList is empty.");
    }

    this.size--;
    return buf.set(i, null);
}

@Override
public String toString()
{
    int i = wrapIndex(leader - size());
    StringBuilder str = new StringBuilder(size());

    for(; i != leader; i = wrapIndex(++i)){
        str.append(buf.get(i));
    }
    return str.toString();
}

public E getOldest(){
    int i = wrapIndex(leader+1);

    for(;;i = wrapIndex(++i)) {
        if(buf.get(i) != null) break;
        if(i == leader)
            throw new IllegalStateException("Cannot remove element."
                    + " CircularArrayList is empty.");
    }

    return buf.get(i);
}

public E getNewest(){
    int i = wrapIndex(leader-1);
    if(buf.get(i) == null)
        throw new IndexOutOfBoundsException("Error while retrieving the newest element. The Circular Array list is empty.");
    return buf.get(i);
}
}