A utility method representing, "Both not null and not equal" in Java

Question

String str = "abc";

Comparing this string variable like the following.

if(str.equals("abc")) {}

In case str is null, it will cause a java.lang.NullPointerException to be thrown as obvious.

To avoid that, an additional null check may be enforced. Such as,

if(str != null && str.equals("abc")) {}

I find it plain ugly. Better could be rewritten as follows.

if("abc".equals(str)) {}

This will never throw a java.lang.NullPointerException even though str is null. Besides, object equals null is never true.

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The last case however, cannot be used, when the conditional expression is inverted like so,

if(!"abc".equals(str)) {
    System.out.println(str.length());
}

This will cause a java.lang.NullPointerException inside the if block, if str is null.

Can this somehow be avoided without rewriting the conditional statement like the following?

if(str != null && !"abc".equals(str)) {}

This is plain ugly and unreadable.

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_{Although the example uses a String object, it may be a more complex object.}

Answer 1

An alternative could be to use the Java 8 optional wrapper

Optional<Customer> optional = findCustomer();

if (optional.isPresent()) {
Customer customer = maybeCustomer.get();
    ... use customer ...
}
else {
    ... deal with absence case ...
}

source: https://dzone.com/articles/java-8-optional-how-use-it

Answer 2

You have to check for null at some point if you want to use str. There is simply no way around it. You can wrap this check into a additional utility function or something like this, but in the end you will not get around the additional check.

If you are a friend of using loads of additional libraries you could use org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils#length(java.lang.String). That does just what you want, maybe you got a library like that present in your application anyway. The apache one is only a example. There are surely others around that do similar things.

If you want to remove the null check all together maybe the better question is: Why can str be null and it is possible to prevent it being null by not accepting this value from the very beginning.

Answer 3

Another possible way to avoid nulls is using an assert: Look at this answer in another similar question:

How to check to see that a set of variables is not null before continuing