How to implement the Java comparable interface?

You just have to define that Animal implements Comparable<Animal> i.e. public class Animal implements Comparable<Animal>. And then you have to implement the compareTo(Animal other) method that way you like it.

@Override
public int compareTo(Animal other) {
    return Integer.compare(this.year_discovered, other.year_discovered);
}

Using this implementation of compareTo, animals with a higher year_discovered will get ordered higher. I hope you get the idea of Comparable and compareTo with this example.

You need to:

• Add implements Comparable<Animal> to the class declaration; and
• Implement a int compareTo( Animal a ) method to perform the comparisons.

Like this:

public class Animal implements Comparable<Animal>{
    public String name;
    public int year_discovered; 
    public String population; 

    public Animal(String name, int year_discovered, String population){
        this.name = name;
        this.year_discovered = year_discovered;
        this.population = population;
    }

    public String toString(){
     String s = "Animal name: "+ name+"\nYear Discovered: "+year_discovered+"\nPopulation: "+population;
     return s;
    }

    @Override
    public int compareTo( final Animal o) {
        return Integer.compare(this.year_discovered, o.year_discovered);
    }
}