How can I compare List and Maps in Flutter

There are two ways to compare two lists in flutter equals and DeepCollectionEquality collection method. Similarly we can also compare two maps in flutter

Let say we have two list which contains the data below

List<String>list1=["Sunday","Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday"];
List<String>list2=["Sunday","Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday"];

Now compare these two lists by using equals(==) operator

now print compare these two list by

print(list1==list2);
print(list1.equals(list2));

here the output will be like below

here == operator the instance of the list not the content, where are equals method compare the data inside lists.

that's why the results came like above

let's create one more list by assigning list1

print(list1==list3);

now this will print true.

Here the list is just strings, if suppose we have the list with custom objects, then how we will compare two lists.

List<Day>list1=[Day(1,"Sunday"),Day(2,"Monday"),Day(3,"Tuesday")];
List<Day>list2=[Day(1,"Sunday"),Day(2,"Monday"),Day(3,"Tuesday")];

print(list1==list2);

when we run it will throw error like

Then how we will compare these custom object list in flutter, there the DeepCollectionEquality come to the picture.

To compare custom object lists we will use DeepCollectionEquality

First create instance of DeepCollectionEquality

then apply equals() method by passing the lists

DeepCollectionEquality dc=DeepCollectionEquality();
print("Compare custom list ${dc.equals(list1,list2)}");

This will print out put like

Then what is DeepCollectionEquality

DeepCollectionEquality is a collection class Creates a deep equality on collections where the order of lists and iterables are not considered important. That is, lists and iterables are treated as unordered iterables

Compare Two maps using DeepCollectionEquality.

Let's take two maps

Map<String, dynamic> student1 = {
  'name': 'DartStdent',
  'class': '10th',
  'marks': 98,
  'address': {
    'Hno': '2-1',
    'state': 'Telangana',
    'Country': 'India',
  }
};

Map<String, dynamic> student2 = {
  'name': 'DartStdent',
  'class': '10th',
  'marks': 98,
  'address': {
    'Hno': '2-1',
    'state': 'Telangana',
    'Country': 'India',
  }
};

print("Compare two maps ${dc.equals(student1,student2)}");

Output:

Conclusion: In this flutter tutorial we covered compare lists and maps inside flutter using equals() method and DeepCollectionEquality  collection class