Is there a no-duplicate List implementation out there?

So here's what I did eventually. I hope this helps someone else.

class NoDuplicatesList<E> extends LinkedList<E> {
    @Override
    public boolean add(E e) {
        if (this.contains(e)) {
            return false;
        }
        else {
            return super.add(e);
        }
    }

    @Override
    public boolean addAll(Collection<? extends E> collection) {
        Collection<E> copy = new LinkedList<E>(collection);
        copy.removeAll(this);
        return super.addAll(copy);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean addAll(int index, Collection<? extends E> collection) {
        Collection<E> copy = new LinkedList<E>(collection);
        copy.removeAll(this);
        return super.addAll(index, copy);
    }

    @Override
    public void add(int index, E element) {
        if (this.contains(element)) {
            return;
        }
        else {
            super.add(index, element);
        }
    }
}   

Here is what I did and it works.

Assuming I have an ArrayList to work with the first thing I did was created a new LinkedHashSet.

LinkedHashSet<E> hashSet = new LinkedHashSet<E>()

Then I attempt to add my new element to the LinkedHashSet. The add method does not alter the LinkedHasSet and returns false if the new element is a duplicate. So this becomes a condition I can test before adding to the ArrayList.

if (hashSet.add(E)) arrayList.add(E);

This is a simple and elegant way to prevent duplicates from being added to an array list. If you want you can encapsulate it in and override of the add method in a class that extends the ArrayList. Just remember to deal with addAll by looping through the elements and calling the add method.

There's no Java collection in the standard library to do this. LinkedHashSet<E> preserves ordering similarly to a List, though, so if you wrap your set in a List when you want to use it as a List you'll get the semantics you want.

Alternatively, the Commons Collections (or commons-collections4, for the generic version) has a List which does what you want already: SetUniqueList / SetUniqueList<E>.