Dart null / false / empty checking: How to write this shorter?

Blackbam picture Blackbam · Feb 24, 2017 · Viewed 44.7k times · Source

This is my code for true on everything but empty string, null and false:

if (routeinfo["no_route"] == "" || routeinfo["no_route"] == null || routeinfo["no_route"] == false) {
    // do sth ...
}

This is my code for true on everything but empty string, null, false or zero:

if (routeinfo["no_route"] == "" || routeinfo["no_route"] == null || routeinfo["no_route"] == false || routeinfo["no_route"] == 0) {
    // do sth...
}

How can I write this shorter in Dart? Or is it not possible?

Answer

Jannie Theunissen picture Jannie Theunissen · Oct 23, 2018

If your requirement was simply empty or null (like mine when I saw this title in a search result), you can use Dart's safe navigation operator to make it a bit more terse:

if (routeinfo["no_route"]?.isEmpty ?? true) {
  // 
}

Where

  • isEmpty checks for an empty String, but if routeinfo is null you can't call isEmpty on null, so we check for null with
  • ?. safe navigation operator which will only call isEmpty when the object is not null and produce null otherwise. So we just need to check for null with
  • ?? null coalescing operator