Iterate over Elements of Java ArrayList

To iterate over elements of ArrayList, you can use Java loop statements like Java while loop, Java For Loop or ArrayList forEach.

In this tutorial, we will go through each of these looping techniques to iterate over elements of ArrayList.

Iterate over ArrayList Elements using While Loop

In the following example, we will iterate over elements of ArrayList using Java While Loop statement. We start with index of zero, increment it by one during each iteration and iterate until the index is less than the size of this ArrayList.

Java Program

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import java.util.ArrayList;

public class ArrayListExample {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		ArrayList<String> names = new ArrayList<String>();
		names.add("Google");
		names.add("Apple");
		names.add("Samsung");
		
		int index = 0;
		while(index < names.size()) {
			String element = names.get(index);
			//work on the element
			System.out.println(element);
			index++;
		}
	}
}

Output

Google
Apple
Samsung

Iterate over ArrayList Elements using For Loop

You can iterate over elements of ArrayList using Java For Loop statement. We start with index of zero, increment it by one during each iteration and iterate until the index is less than the size of this ArrayList.

Java Program

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import java.util.ArrayList;

public class ArrayListExample {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		ArrayList<String> names = new ArrayList<String>();
		names.add("Google");
		names.add("Apple");
		names.add("Samsung");
		
		for(int index = 0; index < names.size(); index++) {
			String element = names.get(index);
			//work on the element
			System.out.println(element);
		}
	}
}

Output

Google
Apple
Samsung

Iterate over ArrayList Elements using Enhanced For Loop

You can also use forEach statement which executes a block of statements for each element in the ArrayList.

Java Program

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import java.util.ArrayList;

public class ArrayListExample {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		ArrayList<String> names = new ArrayList<String>();
		names.add("Google");
		names.add("Apple");
		names.add("Samsung");
		
		for(String element: names) {
			System.out.println(element);
		}
	}
}

Output

Google
Apple
Samsung

Iterate over ArrayList Elements using ArrayList.forEach()

You can also use ArrayList.forEach() statement that executes a set of statements for each element of this ArrayList, just for for-each statement in the above example.

Java Program

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Copy
import java.util.ArrayList;

public class ArrayListExample {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		ArrayList<String> names = new ArrayList<String>();
		names.add("Google");
		names.add("Apple");
		names.add("Samsung");
		
		names.forEach(element -> {
			System.out.println(element);
		});
	}
}

Output

Google
Apple
Samsung

Conclusion

In this Java Tutorial, we learned how to traverse or iterate over elements of ArrayList in Java.