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List

Hazelcast List (IList) is similar to Hazelcast Set, but it also allows duplicate elements.

  • Besides allowing duplicate elements, Hazelcast List preserves the order of elements.

  • Hazelcast List is a non-partitioned data structure where values and each backup are represented by their own single partition.

  • Hazelcast List cannot be scaled beyond the capacity of a single machine.

  • All items are copied to local and iteration occurs locally.


While IMap and ICache are the recommended data structures to be used by Hazelcast Jet, IList can also be used by it for unit testing or similar non-production situations. See here in the Hazelcast Jet Reference Manual to learn how Jet can use IList, e.g., how it can fill IList with data, consume it in a Jet job and drain the results to another IList. See also the Fast Batch Processing and Real-Time Stream Processing use cases for Hazelcast Jet.

Getting a List and Putting Items

Use the HazelcastInstances getList method to get the List, then use the add method to put items into it.

        HazelcastInstance hz = Hazelcast.newHazelcastInstance();
        IList<String> list = hz.getList("list");
        list.add("Tokyo");
        list.add("Paris");
        list.add("London");
        list.add("New York");
        System.out.println("Putting finished!");

Hazelcast List uses ItemListener to listen to events that occur when items are added to and removed from the List. See the Listening for Item Events section for information on how to create an item listener class and register it.

Configuring List

The following are the example Hazelcast List configurations.

Declarative Configuration:

<hazelcast>
    ...
    <list name="default">
        <backup-count>1</backup-count>
        <async-backup-count>0</async-backup-count>
        <max-size>10</max-size>
        <item-listeners>
            <item-listener>
                com.hazelcast.examples.ItemListener
            </item-listener>
        </item-listeners>
        <quorum-ref>quorumname</quorum-ref>
    </list>
    ...
</hazelcast>

Programmatic Configuration:

        Config config = new Config();
        CollectionConfig collectionList = config.getListConfig("MyList");
        collectionList.setBackupCount(1)
                .setMaxSize(10)
                .setQuorumName("quorumname");

Hazelcast List configuration has the following elements:

  • statistics-enabled: True (default) if statistics gathering is enabled on the list, false otherwise.

  • backup-count: Number of synchronous backups. List is a non-partitioned data structure, so all entries of a List reside in one partition. When this parameter is '1', there will be one backup of that List in another member in the cluster. When it is '2', two members will have the backup.

  • async-backup-count: Number of asynchronous backups.

  • max-size: The maximum number of entries for this List.

  • item-listeners: Lets you add listeners (listener classes) for the list items. You can also set the attribute include-value to true if you want the item event to contain the item values. You can set the attribute local to true if you want to listen the items on the local member.

  • quorum-ref: Name of quorum configuration that you want this List to use. See the Split-Brain Protection for IList and TransactionalList section.

Split-Brain Protection for IList and TransactionalList

IList & TransactionalList can be configured to check for a minimum number of available members before applying queue operations (see the Split-Brain Protection section). This is a check to avoid performing successful queue operations on all parts of a cluster during a network partition.

The following is a list of methods, grouped by quorum type, that support split-brain protection checks:

IList:

  • WRITE, READ_WRITE:

    • add

    • addAll

    • clear

    • remove

    • removeAll

    • set

  • READ, READ_WRITE:

    • add

    • contains

    • containsAll

    • get

    • indexOf

    • isEmpty

    • iterator

    • lastIndexOf

    • listIterator

    • size

    • subList

    • toArray

TransactionalList:

  • WRITE, READ_WRITE:

    • add

    • remove

  • READ, READ_WRITE:

    • size

Configuring Split-Brain Protection

Split-brain protection for IList can be configured programmatically using the method setSplitBrainProtectionName(), or declaratively using the element quorum-ref. Following is an example declarative configuration:

<hazelcast>
    ...
    <list name="default">
        <quorum-ref>quorumname</quorum-ref>
    </list>
    ...
</hazelcast>

The value of quorum-ref should be the quorum configuration name which you configured under the quorum element as explained in the Split-Brain Protection section.