In other words,one of the drawback of Java was that even a single functionality one require to create a method and that method is intended to be invoked by a class object. That certainly increases the length of the code.

To compete with other languages, Java developers decided to have functional programming as a new feature in Java.

To achieve this, Functional interface, Lambda Expressions (other alternatives such as Method reference and constructor references ) and many other features were introduced.

Functional Interface

A functional interface can be defined as an interface that consists exactly a single abstract method. However, it can have any number of static or default methods.

In order to use or implement Lambda expression, it is compulsory to use functional interface. A functional Interface is responsible for invoking Lambda expressions.

We cannot write Lambda expression without providing functional interface.

Functional Interface Annotation

@FunctionalInterface annotation is used to explicitly tell the compiler that a particular interface is intended to be a functional interface. A compiler triggers an error when a particular interface doesn’t satisfy the criteria of having a functional interface.

Runnable,Collable, Comparable are some examples of Functional interface.

A functional interface uses lambda expressions, method references or constructor references as one of the ways of its instance creation.

@FunctionalInterface
interface MyFunctionInterface{
        boolean compareMe(int a,int b);
        }



public class FunctionInterfaceExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int num=9,num1=8;
        MyFunctionInterface i = (a,b) ->  a>b;
       if(i.compareMe(num,num1))
           System.out.println(num+" is greater than "+num1);
       else
        System.out.println(num+" is smaller than "+num1);
    }
}

Output: