Java Convert ArrayList to String

In this Java core tutorial we learn how to convert a java.util.ArrayList object to a String value with different solutions in Java programming language.

How to convert ArrayList to String in Java

In the first solution we simply use the toString() method to convert an ArrayList object to a String value as the example Java code below.

ConvertArrayListToStringExample1.java

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public class ConvertArrayListToStringExample1 {
    public static void main(String... args) {
        List<String> arrayList = new ArrayList<>();

        arrayList.add("Java");
        arrayList.add("Kotlin");
        arrayList.add("Groovy");

        String stringValue = arrayList.toString();

        System.out.println(stringValue);
    }
}

The output as below.

[Java, Kotlin, Groovy]

In the following second solution we use a for-each loop to traverse through the ArrayList and using StringBuilder to build the String result.

ConvertArrayListToStringExample2.java

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public class ConvertArrayListToStringExample2 {
    public static void main(String... args) {
        List<String> arrayList = new ArrayList<>();

        arrayList.add("Java");
        arrayList.add("Kotlin");
        arrayList.add("Groovy");

        StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
        for(String item: arrayList) {
            stringBuilder.append(item);
            stringBuilder.append(" ");
        }
        String stringValue = stringBuilder.toString();

        System.out.println(stringValue);
    }
}