Filter values only if not null using lambda in Java8

Question

I have a list of objects say car. I want to filter this list based on some parameter using Java 8. But if the parameter is null, it throws NullPointerException. How to filter out null values?

Current code is as follows

requiredCars = cars.stream().filter(c -> c.getName().startsWith("M"));

This throws NullPointerException if getName() returns null.

Answer 1

In this particular example I think @Tagir is 100% correct get it into one filter and do the two checks. I wouldn't use Optional.ofNullable the Optional stuff is really for return types not to be doing logic... but really neither here nor there.

I wanted to point out that java.util.Objects has a nice method for this in a broad case, so you can do this:

cars.stream()
    .filter(Objects::nonNull)

Which will clear out your null objects. For anyone not familiar, that's the short-hand for the following:

cars.stream()
    .filter(car -> Objects.nonNull(car))

To partially answer the question at hand to return the list of car names that starts with "M":

cars.stream()
    .filter(car -> Objects.nonNull(car))
    .map(car -> car.getName())
    .filter(carName -> Objects.nonNull(carName))
    .filter(carName -> carName.startsWith("M"))
    .collect(Collectors.toList());

Once you get used to the shorthand lambdas you could also do this:

cars.stream()
    .filter(Objects::nonNull)
    .map(Car::getName)        // Assume the class name for car is Car
    .filter(Objects::nonNull)
    .filter(carName -> carName.startsWith("M"))
    .collect(Collectors.toList());

Unfortunately once you .map(Car::getName) you'll only be returning the list of names, not the cars. So less beautiful but fully answers the question:

cars.stream()
    .filter(car -> Objects.nonNull(car))
    .filter(car -> Objects.nonNull(car.getName()))
    .filter(car -> car.getName().startsWith("M"))
    .collect(Collectors.toList());