Java 8 features

The release of Oracle Java 8 marked a turning point in the history of the world's most popular development platform. In addition to significant improvements to the overall Java programming paradigm, the JVM, Java language, and libraries have been updated in a coordinated way. This update includes many new features, including improved usability, improved performance and security, and improved overall system performance.

This was a revolutionary release of the Java platform for software development. This includes various updates to Java programming, JVM, tools and libraries.

• Lambda Expressions,
• Method Reference,
• Feature Interface,
• Stream API,
• Base Method,
• Base64 Encoding Decoding, Static Method of
• Interface,
• Optional Class,
• Collector Class,
• ForEach4, Na4shorn4 Engine, Na4shorn4 Engine Parallel Array Sorting,
• Types and Recomments,
• I/O Extensions,
• Parallel Extensions,
• JDBC Extensions, etc.

Lambda Expressions

Lambda expressions help you write code in a functional style. Provides a clean and concise way to implement the Single Abstract Method (SAM) interface using expressions. Very useful in collection libraries to help you iterate, filter, and search your data.

Method References

Java 8 method references are used to reference methods in functional interfaces. This is a concise and simple form of a lambda expression. Whenever you use a lambda expression to reference a method, you can replace the lambda expression with a method reference.

Functional Interface

An interface that contains only one abstract method is called a functional interface. You can have multiple standard and static methods. You can also declare methods of an object class.
The
functional interface is also known as the Single Abstract Method Interface (SAM).

Optional

Java introduced a new Optional class in Java 8. This is a public final class used to handle NullPointerException in Java applications. To use this class, you must import the java.util package. Provides a way to check if a value exists for a particular variable.

forEach

Java provides a new forEach() method that iterates over elements. It is defined in the Iterable and Stream interfaces.

This is the default method defined in the Iterable interface. Collection classes that extend the Iterable interface can iterate over elements using the forEach() method.

This method takes a single parameter which is a functional interface. So you can pass lambda expressions as arguments.

Date-Time API

Java introduced a new date and time API starting with Java 8. The java.time package contains Java 8 date and time classes.

Default Methods

Java provides the ability to create native methods within interfaces. Methods defined within an interface and marked with the default keyword are called default methods. These methods are not abstract and may have method bodies.

Nashorn JavaScript Engine

Nashorn is a JavaScript engine. Used to dynamically run JavaScript code in the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Java provides the jjs command line tool used to run JavaScript code.

There are two ways to run JavaScript code.

• by using the jjs command-line tool and inserting
• into the Java source code.

StringJoiner

Java has added a new final class, StringJoiner, to the java.util package. Used to construct a series of characters separated by delimiters. You can now create strings by passing delimiters such as commas (,), hyphens (-), etc.

Collectors

The collector is the last class that extends the Object class. Provides collapse operations such as accumulating elements in a collection, summing elements based on other criteria, and more.

Stream API

The Java 8 java.util.stream package consists of classes, interfaces, and enumerations that allow you to perform operations on elements of a functional style. Perform lazy evaluation. So it only runs when needed.

Stream Filter

Java Streams provides a filter() method that filters the elements of a stream based on a given predicate. If you want to get only the even elements of the list, you can easily do it using the filter() method.

This method takes a predicate as an argument and returns a stream of result elements.

Java Base64 Encoding and Decoding

Java provides Base64 classes for encryption and decryption operations. To use the method, you must import the java.util.Base64 class from your source file.

This class provides three different encoders and decoders for encrypting information at each level.

Java Parallel Array Sorting

Java provides a new optional feature of the Arrays class, which is used to sort the elements of an array in parallel. The parallelSort() method has been added to the java.util.Arrays class to provide array sorting using the JSR 166 fork/join common concurrency pool. This is an overloaded method.

Java 8 Security Enhancements

1. The Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE) provider enables Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.1 and TLS 1.2 on the client side by default.
2. An improved AccessController.doPrivileged method has been added to assert a subset of privileges without preventing code from going through the stack to check for other privileges.
3. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and Password-Based Encryption (PBE) algorithms such as PBEWithSHA256AndAES_128 and PBEWithSHA512AndAES_256 have been added to the SunJCE provider.
4. Java Secure Socket Extension (SunJSSE) included Server Name Indication (SNI) extensions for client applications by default in JDK 7, and JDK 8 supports SNI extensions for server applications. The SNI extension is a feature that extends the SSL/TLS protocol to specify the name of the server the client is trying to connect to during the handshake.
5. SunJSSE has been enhanced to support the Associated Data Encryption (AEAD) authentication algorithm. The Java Cryptography Extension (SunJCE) provider has been enhanced to support AES/GCM/NoPadding encryption implementations and optional Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) algorithms.
6. A new command flag -importpassword has been added to the keytool utility. Used to accept passwords and store them securely with a secret key. Added classes such as java.security.DomainLoadStoreParameter and java.security.PKCS12Attribute to support DKS keystore types.
7. In JDK 8, the encryption algorithm has been enhanced with the SHA-224 variant of the implementation's SHA-2 message digest family.
8. Improved support for NSA Suite B encryption, including: Removed key size limit for Diffie-Hellman (DH) algorithm from 1024 to 2048.
9. The SecureRandom class provides strong cryptographic random number generation for private or public keys, passwords, and signed messages. The getInstanceStrong() method was introduced in JDK 8 and returns the most secure instance of SecureRandom. It should be used when you need to generate RSA private and public keys. SecureRandom includes other changes, including:
10. Two new implementations are provided for UNIX platforms that provide
11. blocking and non-blocking behavior.
12. A new PKIXRevocationChecker class is included that uses the PKIX algorithm to check the revocation status of a certificate. It supports best-effort validation, end-entity certificate validation, and engine-specific options.
13. Public Key Cryptography Standard 11 (PKCS) has been extended to include 64-bit support for Windows.
14. Two new rcache types have been added to Kerberos 5. The none type means no rcache at all and the dfl type means DFL style file rcache. Also, acceptor-requested pluggable keys are now supported. It is configured using the sun.security.krb5.rcache and sun.security.krb5.acceptor.subkey system properties.
15. In JDK 8, transition to Kerberos 5 protocol and constrained delegation are supported in the same scope.
16. Weak encryption is disabled by default in Java 8. DES-related Kerberos 5 encryption types are not natively supported.
17. This type of encryption can be enabled by adding allow_weak_crypto=true to the krb5.conf file.
18. You can set the server name to null to indicate an unrelated server. This means that clients can request services using any server name. Once the context is established, the server can obtain a name with an attribute that matches the key name SASL.BOUND_SERVER_NAME.
19. The Java Native Interface (JNI) bridge to the native Java General Security Service (JGSS) is now supported on Mac OS X. You can enable it by setting the sun.security.jgss.native system property to true.
20. A new system property jdk.tls.ephemeralDHKeySize has been defined to set the size of the ephemeral DH key. The minimum allowed DH key size is the exported cipher suite or legacy mode (jdk).

etc. many more enhancemnet also present in this version.