The easiest way to check is entity == null. There is no shorter way to do that.
Note that there is a method for this in the standard lib:
Objects.isNull(Object obj)
And another one which is the opposite of the above one:
Objects.nonNull(Object obj)
And there is yet another one which can be used to force a value to be not null, it throws a NullPointerException otherwise:
T Objects.requireNonNull(T obj);
Note: The Objects class was added in Java 7, but the isNull() and nonNull() methods were added only in Java 8.
The easiest way to check is entity == null. There is no shorter way to do that.
Note that there is a method for this in the standard lib:
Objects.isNull(Object obj)
And another one which is the opposite of the above one:
Objects.nonNull(Object obj)
And there is yet another one which can be used to force a value to be not null, it throws a NullPointerException otherwise:
T Objects.requireNonNull(T obj);
Note: The Objects class was added in Java 7, but the isNull() and nonNull() methods were added only in Java 8.
try this using reflection
import java.lang.reflect.Field;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Objects;
public class ObjectsUtils {
public static boolean allNull(Object target) {
return Arrays.stream(target.getClass()
.getDeclaredFields())
.peek(f -> f.setAccessible(true))
.map(f -> getFieldValue(f, target))
.allMatch(Objects::isNull);
}
private static Object getFieldValue(Field field, Object target) {
try {
return field.get(target);
} catch (IllegalAccessException e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
}
}
Videos
Drawable drawable = Common.getDrawableFromUrl(this, product.getMapPath());
if (drawable == null) {
drawable = getRandomDrawable();
}
The equals() method checks for value equality, which means that it compares the contents of two objects. Since null is not an object, this crashes when trying to compare the contents of your object to the contents of null.
The == operator checks for reference equality, which means that it looks whether the two objects are actually the very same object. This does not require the objects to actually exist; two nonexistent objects (null references) are also equal.
Edited Java 8 Solution:
final Drawable drawable =
Optional.ofNullable(Common.getDrawableFromUrl(this, product.getMapPath()))
.orElseGet(() -> getRandomDrawable());
You can declare drawable final in this case.
As Chasmo pointed out, Android doesn't support Java 8 at the moment. So this solution is only possible in other contexts.
Your solution is very smart. The problem I see is the fact that you don't know why you got a null? Was it because the house had no rooms? Was it becuase the town had no houses? Was it because the country had no towns? Was it because there was a null in the 0 position of the collection because of an error even when there are houses in positions 1 and greater?
If you make extensibe use of the NonPE class, you will have serious debugging problems. I think it is better to know where exactly the chain is broken than to silently get a null that could be hiding a deeper error.
Also this violates the Law of Demeter: country.getTown().getHouses().get(0).getLivingRoom(). More often than not, violating some good principle makes you have to implement unorthodox solutions to solve the problem caused by violating such principle.
My recommendation is that you use it with caution and try solve the design flaw that makes you have to incur in the train wreck antipattern (so you don't have to use NonPE everywhere). Otherwise you may have bugs that will be hard to detect.
The idea is fine, really good in fact. Since Java 8 the Optional types exist, a detailed explanation can be found at Java Optional type. A example with what you posted is
Optional.ofNullable(country)
.map(Country::getTown)
.map(Town::Houses);
And further on.
The dilemma
If a variable with null value gets used in your program causing a NullPointerException, this is clearly a situation in your program which you did not expect. You must ask yourself the question: "Did I not expect it because I didn't take into consideration the possibility of a null value or did I assume the value could never be null here?"
If the answer is the latter, the problem isn't because you didn't handle the null value. The problem happened earlier, and you're only seeing the consequence of that error on the particular line it's used. In this case, simply adding a if (variable != null) isn't going to cut it. You'll wind up skipping lines you were supposed to execute because the variable was null, and you'll ultimately hit a line further on where you again assumed it wouldn't be null.
When null should be used
As a general rule, return null only when "absent" is a possible return value. In other words, your data layer may search for a record with a specific id. If that record isn't found, you can either throw an exception or simply return null. You may do either, but I prefer not to throw exceptions in situations where the strong possibility exists. So you return null instead of a value.
The caller of this method, presumably written by you, knows the possibility exists that the record may not exist and checks for null accordingly. There is nothing wrong with this in this case, though you should handle this possibility as soon as possible as otherwise everywhere in your program you will need to deal with the possibility of a null value.
Conclusion
In other words, treat null as a legitimate value, but deal with it immediately rather than wait. Ideally in your program, you should ever only have to check if it is null once in your program and only in the place where such a null value is handled.
For every value you expect to be non-null, you need not add a check. If it is null, accept that there is an error in your program when it was instantiated. In essence, favor fail fast over fail safe.
Deciding whether or not null is a allowed as an object value is a decision that you must make consciously for your project.
You don't have to accept a language construct just because it exists; in fact, it is often better to enforce a strict rule against any nullvalues in the entire project. If you do this, you don't need checks; if a NullPointerException ever happens, that automatically means that there is a defect in your code, and it doesn't matter whether this is signalled by a NPE or by some other sanity check mechanism.
If you can't do this, for instance because you have to interoperate with other libraries that allow null, then you do have to check for it. Even then it makes sense to keep the areas of code where null is possible small if possible. The larger the project, the more sense it makes to define an entire "anti-corruption layer" with the only purpose of preserving stricter value guarantees than is possible elsewhere.