How to map to multiple elements with Java 8 streams?

It’s an interesting question, because it shows that there are a lot of different approaches to achieve the same result. Below I show three different implementations.

Default methods in Collection Framework: Java 8 added some methods to the collections classes, that are not directly related to the Stream API. Using these methods, you can significantly simplify the implementation of the non-stream implementation:

Collection<DataSet> convert(List<MultiDataPoint> multiDataPoints) {
    Map<String, DataSet> result = new HashMap<>();
    multiDataPoints.forEach(pt ->
        pt.keyToData.forEach((key, value) ->
            result.computeIfAbsent(
                key, k -> new DataSet(k, new ArrayList<>()))
            .dataPoints.add(new DataPoint(pt.timestamp, value))));
    return result.values();
}

Stream API with flatten and intermediate data structure: The following implementation is almost identical to the solution provided by Stuart Marks. In contrast to his solution, the following implementation uses an anonymous inner class as intermediate data structure.

Collection<DataSet> convert(List<MultiDataPoint> multiDataPoints) {
    return multiDataPoints.stream()
        .flatMap(mdp -> mdp.keyToData.entrySet().stream().map(e ->
            new Object() {
                String key = e.getKey();
                DataPoint dataPoint = new DataPoint(mdp.timestamp, e.getValue());
            }))
        .collect(
            collectingAndThen(
                groupingBy(t -> t.key, mapping(t -> t.dataPoint, toList())),
                m -> m.entrySet().stream().map(e -> new DataSet(e.getKey(), e.getValue())).collect(toList())));
}

Stream API with map merging: Instead of flattening the original data structures, you can also create a Map for each MultiDataPoint, and then merge all maps into a single map with a reduce operation. The code is a bit simpler than the above solution:

Collection<DataSet> convert(List<MultiDataPoint> multiDataPoints) {
    return multiDataPoints.stream()
        .map(mdp -> mdp.keyToData.entrySet().stream()
            .collect(toMap(e -> e.getKey(), e -> asList(new DataPoint(mdp.timestamp, e.getValue())))))
        .reduce(new HashMap<>(), mapMerger())
        .entrySet().stream()
        .map(e -> new DataSet(e.getKey(), e.getValue()))
        .collect(toList());
}

You can find an implementation of the map merger within the Collectors class. Unfortunately, it is a bit tricky to access it from the outside. Following is an alternative implementation of the map merger:

<K, V> BinaryOperator<Map<K, List<V>>> mapMerger() {
    return (lhs, rhs) -> {
        Map<K, List<V>> result = new HashMap<>();
        lhs.forEach((key, value) -> result.computeIfAbsent(key, k -> new ArrayList<>()).addAll(value));
        rhs.forEach((key, value) -> result.computeIfAbsent(key, k -> new ArrayList<>()).addAll(value));
        return result;
    };
}