Externalsortinginjava

External-Memory Sorting in Java: useful to sort very large files using multiple cores and an external-memory algorithm.

The versions 0.1 of the library are compatible with Java 6 and above. Versions 0.2 and above require at least Java 8.

This code is used in Apache Jackrabbit Oak as well as in Apache Beam.

Code sample

import com.google.code.externalsorting.ExternalSort;

//... inputfile: input file name
//... outputfile: output file name
// next command sorts the lines from inputfile to outputfile
ExternalSort.mergeSortedFiles(ExternalSort.sortInBatch(new File(inputfile)), new File(outputfile));
// you can also provide a custom string comparator, see API

Code sample (CSV)

For sorting CSV files, it might be more convenient to use CsvExternalSort.

import com.google.code.externalsorting.CsvExternalSort;
import com.google.code.externalsorting.CsvSortOptions;

// provide a comparator
Comparator<CSVRecord> comparator = (op1, op2) -> op1.get(0).compareTo(op2.get(0));
//... inputfile: input file name
//... outputfile: output file name
//...provide sort options
CsvSortOptions sortOptions = new CsvSortOptions
				.Builder(CsvExternalSort.DEFAULTMAXTEMPFILES, comparator, 1, CsvExternalSort.estimateAvailableMemory())
				.charset(Charset.defaultCharset())
				.distinct(false)
				.numHeader(1)
				.skipHeader(false)
				.format(CSVFormat.DEFAULT)
				.build();

// next two lines sort the lines from inputfile to outputfile
List<File> sortInBatch = CsvExternalSort.sortInBatch(file, null, sortOptions);;
CsvExternalSort.mergeSortedFiles(sortInBatch, outputfile, sortOptions, true);

API Documentation

http://www.javadoc.io/doc/com.google.code.externalsortinginjava/externalsortinginjava/

Maven dependency

You can download the jar files from the Maven central repository: https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/google/code/externalsortinginjava/externalsortinginjava/

You can also specify the dependency in the Maven "pom.xml" file:

    <dependencies>
         <dependency>
	     <groupId>com.google.code.externalsortinginjava</groupId>
	     <artifactId>externalsortinginjava</artifactId>
	     <version>[0.1.9,)</version>
         </dependency>
     </dependencies>

How to build

• get the java jdk
• Install Maven 2
• mvn install - builds jar (requires signing)
• or mvn package - builds jar (does not require signing)
• mvn test - runs tests