Optional in Java

Java introduced the `Optional` class in Java 8 to better handle null references. Optional is a container object that may or may not hold a value. The class then provides methods to operator on the data that it may contain. An Optional can be created for any data type in Java. For primitive data types, Optional is available as a variant for int, double and long in the form of `OptionalInt`, `OptionalDouble`, `OptionalLong`. However, These variants miss out on the map and filter methods which Optional provides, but these operations can be performed on these variants by converting them into a Stream using the stream() method To create an instance of Optional class, We need to use the static methods of() or ofNullable() with a value and an empty optional using the empty() method. <pre> Optional<String> strOptional = Optional.of("data"); Optional<String> emptyOptional = Optional.empty(); Optional<String> nullableOptional = Optional.ofNullable(null); //Returns Optional.EMPTY</pre> Before the Optional class, A reference had to be checked for null value with an explicit null check, this can be replaced with a isPresent() call to check if a value is present in the Optional instance. <pre> if(value != null) { System.out.println(value); }</pre> can be replaced with <pre> if(optionalValue.isPresent()) { System.out.println(optionalValue.get()); }</pre> The above example can also written using the ifPresent() method, which takes a Consumer and is executed only if the Optional has a value. <a href="https://medium.com/@developerguy25/optional-in-java-8fac3ee2c515">Website</a>