Is there a no-duplicate List implementation out there?

There's no Java collection in the standard library to do this. LinkedHashSet<E> preserves ordering similarly to a List, though, so if you wrap your set in a List when you want to use it as a List you'll get the semantics you want.

Alternatively, the Commons Collections (or commons-collections4, for the generic version) has a List which does what you want already: SetUniqueList / SetUniqueList<E>.

So here's what I did eventually. I hope this helps someone else.

class NoDuplicatesList<E> extends LinkedList<E> {
    @Override
    public boolean add(E e) {
        if (this.contains(e)) {
            return false;
        }
        else {
            return super.add(e);
        }
    }

    @Override
    public boolean addAll(Collection<? extends E> collection) {
        Collection<E> copy = new LinkedList<E>(collection);
        copy.removeAll(this);
        return super.addAll(copy);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean addAll(int index, Collection<? extends E> collection) {
        Collection<E> copy = new LinkedList<E>(collection);
        copy.removeAll(this);
        return super.addAll(index, copy);
    }

    @Override
    public void add(int index, E element) {
        if (this.contains(element)) {
            return;
        }
        else {
            super.add(index, element);
        }
    }
}   

Why not encapsulate a set with a list, sort like:

new ArrayList( new LinkedHashSet() )

This leaves the other implementation for someone who is a real master of Collections ;-)

You should seriously consider dhiller's answer:

1. Instead of worrying about adding your objects to a duplicate-less List, add them to a Set (any implementation), which will by nature filter out the duplicates.
2. When you need to call the method that requires a List, wrap it in a new ArrayList(set) (or a new LinkedList(set), whatever).

I think that the solution you posted with the NoDuplicatesList has some issues, mostly with the contains() method, plus your class does not handle checking for duplicates in the Collection passed to your addAll() method.

I needed something like that, so I went to the commons collections and used the SetUniqueList, but when I ran some performance test, I found that it seems not optimized comparing to the case if I want to use a Set and obtain an Array using the Set.toArray() method.

The SetUniqueTest took 20:1 time to fill and then traverse 100,000 Strings comparing to the other implementation, which is a big deal difference.

So, if you worry about the performance, I recommend you to use the Set and Get an Array instead of using the SetUniqueList, unless you really need the logic of the SetUniqueList, then you'll need to check other solutions...

Testing code main method:

public static void main(String[] args) {


SetUniqueList pq = SetUniqueList.decorate(new ArrayList());
Set s = new TreeSet();

long t1 = 0L;
long t2 = 0L;
String t;


t1 = System.nanoTime();
for (int i = 0; i < 200000; i++) {
    pq.add("a" + Math.random());
}
while (!pq.isEmpty()) {
    t = (String) pq.remove(0);
}
t1 = System.nanoTime() - t1;

t2 = System.nanoTime();
for (int i = 0; i < 200000; i++) {
    s.add("a" + Math.random());
}

s.clear();
String[] d = (String[]) s.toArray(new String[0]);
s.clear();
for (int i = 0; i < d.length; i++) {
    t = d[i];

}
t2 = System.nanoTime() - t2;

System.out.println((double)t1/1000/1000/1000); //seconds
System.out.println((double)t2/1000/1000/1000); //seconds
System.out.println(((double) t1) / t2);        //comparing results

}

Regards, Mohammed Sleem

The documentation for collection interfaces says:

Set — a collection that cannot contain duplicate elements.
List — an ordered collection (sometimes called a sequence). Lists can contain duplicate elements.

So if you don't want duplicates, you probably shouldn't use a list.

Off the top of my head, lists allow duplicates. You could quickly implement a UniqueArrayList and override all the add / insert functions to check for contains() before you call the inherited methods. For personal use, you could only implement the add method you use, and override the others to throw an exception in case future programmers try to use the list in a different manner.

What about this? Just check the list before adding with a contains for an already existing object

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    SearchResult nextElement = searchResult.nextElement();
    Attributes attributes = nextElement.getAttributes();

    String stringName = getAttributeStringValue(attributes, SearchAttribute.*attributeName*);
   
   if(!List.contains(stringName)){
    List.add(stringName);
   }
}