我认为最好的方法是使用特殊的数据结构。您可以考虑TreeMap，但在一般情况下，值可能不是唯一的。因此，您的选择是PriorityQueue：

public static <K, V> Iterator<Map.Entry<K, V>> sortByValue(
                                              Map<K, V> map,
                                              Comparator<V> valueComparator) {
    Queue<Map.Entry<K, V>> queue = new PriorityQueue<>((one, two) ->
                     valueComparator.compare(one.getValue(), two.getValue()));
    queue.addAll(map.entrySet());
    return queue.iterator();
}

    Map<String, Integer> map = new HashMap<>();
    map.put("b", 2);
    map.put("a", 1);
    map.put("d", 4);
    map.put("c", 3);
    
    // ----- Using Java 7 -------------------
    List<Map.Entry<String, Integer>> entries = new ArrayList<>(map.entrySet());
    Collections.sort(entries, (o1, o2) -> o1.getValue().compareTo(o2.getValue()));
    System.out.println(entries); // [a=1, b=2, c=3, d=4]


    // ----- Using Java 8 Stream API --------
   map.entrySet().stream().sorted(Map.Entry.comparingByValue()).forEach(System.out::println); // {a=1, b=2, c=3, d=4}

    

对于Java 8，您可以使用streams api以一种明显不那么冗长的方式来实现：

Map<K, V> sortedMap = map.entrySet().stream()
                         .sorted(Entry.comparingByValue())
                         .collect(Collectors.toMap(Entry::getKey, Entry::getValue, (e1, e2) -> e1, LinkedHashMap::new));

最干净的方法是利用集合对值进行排序：

Map<String, Long> map = new HashMap<String, Long>();
// populate with data to sort on Value
// use datastructure designed for sorting

Queue queue = new PriorityQueue( map.size(), new MapComparable() );
queue.addAll( map.entrySet() );

// get a sorted map
LinkedHashMap<String, Long> linkedMap = new LinkedHashMap<String, Long>();

for (Map.Entry<String, Long> entry; (entry = queue.poll())!=null;) {
    linkedMap.put(entry.getKey(), entry.getValue());
}

public static class MapComparable implements Comparator<Map.Entry<String, Long>>{

  public int compare(Entry<String, Long> e1, Entry<String, Long> e2) {
    return e1.getValue().compareTo(e2.getValue());
  }
}

使用Guava库：

public static <K,V extends Comparable<V>>SortedMap<K,V> sortByValue(Map<K,V> original){
    var comparator = Ordering.natural()
            .reverse() // highest first
            .nullsLast()
            .onResultOf(Functions.forMap(original, null))
            .compound(Ordering.usingToString());
    return ImmutableSortedMap.copyOf(original, comparator);
}

这还有一个额外的好处，即可以使用Java8进行升序或降序排序

import static java.util.Comparator.comparingInt;
import static java.util.stream.Collectors.toMap;
import java.util.LinkedHashMap;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Map.Entry;
import java.util.stream.Collectors;
import java.util.stream.Stream;

class Utils {
    public static Map<String, Integer> sortMapBasedOnValues(Map<String, Integer> map, boolean descending) {
        int multiplyBy = (descending) ? -1: 1;
        Map<String, Integer> sorted =  map.entrySet().stream()
                .sorted(comparingInt(e -> multiplyBy * e.getValue() ))
                .collect(toMap(
                        Map.Entry::getKey, 
                        Map.Entry::getValue,
                        (a, b) -> { throw new AssertionError();},
                        LinkedHashMap::new
                    ));
        return sorted;
    }
}