How to return when an optional is empty?

Question

I love that optionals are in the Java standard library now. But there is one basic problem I keep running into which I haven't figured out how to solve in the best (easiest to read and understand, prettiest, shortest) way:

How to return from a method when an optional is empty?

I am looking for a general solution which works for different combinations of numbers of optionals and sizes of code blocks.

In the following examples I'll try to show what I mean:

void m1() {
    // When I get an optional:
    Optional<String> o = getOptional();

    // And want to return if it's empty
    if (!o.isPresent()) return;

    // In the whole rest of the method I have to call Optional.get 
    // every time I want the value:
    System.out.println(o.get());

    // Which is pretty ugly and verbose!
}


void m2() {
    // If I instead return null if a value is absent:
    String s = getNullabe();
    if (s == null) return;

    // Then I can use the value directly:
    System.out.println(s);
}

This question is about how to get the good aspect of both the examples above: The type safely of the optional and the brevity of nullable types.

The rest of the examples illustrates this more.

void m3() {
    // If I on the other hand want to throw on empty that's pretty and compact:
    String s = getOptional()
        .orElseThrow(IllegalStateException::new);

    System.out.println(s);
}

void m4() {
    Optional<String> o = getOptional();
    if (!o.isPresent()) return;

    // I can of course declare a new variable for the un-optionalised string:
    String s = o.get();

    System.out.println(s);

    // But the old variable still remains in scope for the whole method 
    // which is ugly and annoying.
    System.out.println(o.get());
}


void m5() {
    // This is compact and maybe pretty in some ways:
    getOptional().ifPresent(s -> {
        System.out.println(s);

        // But the extra level of nesting is annoying and it feels 
        // wrong to write all the code in a big lambda.

        getOtherOptional().ifPresent(i -> {
            // Also, more optional values makes it really weird and 
            // pretty hard to read,  while with nullables I would 
            // get no extra nesting, it would looks good and be 
            // easy to read.
            System.out.println("i: " + i);

            // It doesn't work in all cases either way.
        });
    });
}


Optional<String> getOptional() {
    throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
}

Optional<Integer> getOtherOptional() {
    throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
}

String getNullabe() {
    throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
}

How can I return from a method if an optional is empty, without having to use get in the rest of the method, without declaring an extra variable and without extra levels of block nesting?

Or if it's not possible to get all that, what is the best way to handle this situation?

Answer 1

You could use orElse(null):

String o = getOptional().orElse(null);
if (o == null) {
    return;
}