I didn’t have a specific goal, but yeah I do wish more people used Optional.
My one “gripe” with Optional (and I use it lightly) is that they mean for it to only be used as a return type instead of anywhere something can be optional. It can still be used as that though, they just don’t recommend it.
IMHO it should be used for parameters, as long as there is more than one optional parameter. If rather all non nullable parameters though, which is usually doable.
I’ve waffled on it. Currently my opinion is to use whatever nullable annotation the project uses (if any, otherwise JetBrains’s). Essentially, I’m not sure if the official recommendation to avoid Optional for uses other than return types has reasoning I’m missing.
I do use it like this though and lament that we don’t have an Elvis operator (?:)
Optional! I was reluctant at first because of the nullibility, but it’s so useful.
I’m not sure this is what you were going for. I think most people know about optional and are skeptical because it’s not a fix for nullability.
Don’t forget its subtypes. OptionalInt, OptionalDouble etc. This avoids auto(un)boxing.
Oh wow that’s great. I didn’t know about those at all.
I didn’t have a specific goal, but yeah I do wish more people used Optional.
My one “gripe” with Optional (and I use it lightly) is that they mean for it to only be used as a return type instead of anywhere something can be optional. It can still be used as that though, they just don’t recommend it.
IMHO it should be used for parameters, as long as there is more than one optional parameter. If rather all non nullable parameters though, which is usually doable.
I’ve waffled on it. Currently my opinion is to use whatever nullable annotation the project uses (if any, otherwise JetBrains’s). Essentially, I’m not sure if the official recommendation to avoid
Optionalfor uses other than return types has reasoning I’m missing.I do use it like this though and lament that we don’t have an Elvis operator (
?:)Optional.ofNullable(thingThatMightBeNull).map(e -> e.someMethod()).orElse(null);Instead of wrapping it in an optional you can do
Objects.requireNonNullElse(value, defaultValue)Optional has more syntactic sugar for more complex scenarios / functional call chaining that prevents repetitive
ifchecksOptional.ofNullable(myObj) .map(MyClass::getProperty) .map(MyOtherClass::getAnotherProperty) .filter(obj -> somePredicate(obj)) .orElse(null)This is completely null safe, the function calls are only made if the object is not null