We Keep Coding

Static default method for not initialized Classes

sometimes it would be convenient to have an easy way of doing the following:
Foo a = dosomething();
if (a != null){
if (a.isValid()){
...
}
}
My idea was to have some kind of static “default” methods for not initialized variables like this:
class Foo{
public boolean isValid(){
return true;
}
public static boolean isValid(){
return false;
}
}
And now I could do this…
Foo a = dosomething();
if (a.isValid()){
// In our example case -> variable is initialized and the "normal" method gets called
}else{
// In our example case -> variable is null
}
So, if a == null the static “default” methods from our class gets called, otherwise the method of our object gets called.
Is there either some keyword I’m missing to do exactly this or is there a reason why this is not already implemented in programming languages like java/c#?
Note: this example is not very breathtaking if this would work, however there are examples where this would be - indeed - very nice.

It's very slightly odd; ordinarily, x.foo() runs the foo() method as defined by the object that the x reference is pointing to. What you propose is a fallback mechanism where, if x is null (is referencing nothing) then we don't look at the object that x is pointing to (there's nothing its pointing at; hence, that is impossible), but that we look at the type of x, the variable itself, instead, and ask this type: Hey, can you give me the default impl of foo()?
The core problem is that you're assigning a definition to null that it just doesn't have. Your idea requires a redefinition of what null means which means the entire community needs to go back to school. I think the current definition of null in the java community is some nebulous ill defined cloud of confusion, so this is probably a good idea, but it is a huge commitment, and it is extremely easy for the OpenJDK team to dictate a direction and for the community to just ignore it. The OpenJDK team should be very hesitant in trying to 'solve' this problem by introducing a language feature, and they are.
Let's talk about the definitions of null that make sense, which definition of null your idea specifically is catering to (at the detriment of the other interpretations!), and how catering to that specific idea is already easy to do in current java, i.e. - what you propose sounds outright daft to me, in that it's just unneccessary and forces an opinion of what null means down everybody's throats for no reason.
Not applicable / undefined / unset
This definition of null is exactly how SQL defines it, and it has the following properties:
There is no default implementation available. By definition! How can one define what the size is of, say, an unset list? You can't say 0. You have no idea what the list is supposed to be. The very point is that interaction with an unset/not-applicable/unknown value should immediately lead to a result that represents either [A] the programmer messed up, the fact that they think they can interact with this value means they programmed a bug - they made an assumption about the state of the system which does not hold, or [B] that the unset nature is infectuous: The operation returns the notion 'unknown / unset / not applicable' as result.
SQL chose the B route: Any interaction with NULL in SQL land is infectuous. For example, even NULL = NULL in SQL is NULL, not FALSE. It also means that all booleans in SQL are tri-state, but this actually 'works', in that one can honestly fathom this notion. If I ask you: Hey, are the lights on?, then there are 3 reasonable answers: Yes, No, and I can't tell you right now; I don't know.
In my opinion, java as a language is meant for this definition as well, but has mostly chosen the [A] route: Throw an NPE to let everybody know: There is a bug, and to let the programmer get to the relevant line extremely quickly. NPEs are easy to solve, which is why I don't get why everybody hates NPEs. I love NPEs. So much better than some default behaviour that is usually but not always what I intended (objectively speaking, it is better to have 50 bugs that each takes 3 minutes to solve, than one bug that takes an an entire working day, by a large margin!) – this definition 'works' with the language:
Uninitialized fields, and uninitialized values in an array begin as null, and in the absence of further information, treating it as unset is correct.
They are, in fact, infectuously erroneous: Virtually all attempts to interact with them results in an exception, except ==, but that is intentional, for the same reason in SQL IS NULL will return TRUE or FALSE and not NULL: Now we're actually talking about the pointer nature of the object itself ("foo" == "foo" can be false if the 2 strings aren't the same ref: Clearly == in java between objects is about the references itself and not about the objects referenced).
A key aspect to this is that null has absolutely no semantic meaning, at all. Its lack of semantic meaning is the point. In other words, null doesn't mean that a value is short or long or blank or indicative of anything in particular. The only thing it does mean is that it means nothing. You can't derive any information from it. Hence, foo.size() is not 0 when foo is unset/unknown - the question 'what is the size of the object foo is pointing at' is unanswerable, in this definition, and thus NPE is exactly right.
Your idea would hurt this interpretation - it would confound matters by giving answers to unanswerable questions.
Sentinel / 'empty'
null is sometimes used as a value that does have semantic meaning. Something specific. For example, if you ever wrote this, you're using this interpretation:
if (x == null || x.isEmpty()) return false;
Here you've assigned a semantic meaning to null - the same meaning you assigned to an empty string. This is common in java and presumably stems from some bass ackwards notion of performance. For example, in the eclipse ecj java parser system, all empty arrays are done with null pointers. For example, the definition of a method has a field Argument[] arguments (for the method parameters; using argument is the slightly wrong word, but it is used to store the param definitions); however, for methods with zero parameters, the semantically correct choice is obviously new Argument[0]. However, that is NOT what ecj fills the Abstract Syntax Tree with, and if you are hacking around on the ecj code and assign new Argument[0] to this, other code will mess up as it just wasn't written to deal with this.
This is in my opinion bad use of null, but is quite common. And, in ecj's defense, it is about 4 times faster than javac, so I don't think it's fair to cast aspersions at their seemingly deplorably outdated code practices. If it's stupid and it works it isn't stupid, right? ecj also has a better track record than javac (going mostly by personal experience; I've found 3 bugs in ecj over the years and 12 in javac).
This kind of null does get a lot better if we implement your idea.
The better solution
What ecj should have done, get the best of both worlds: Make a public constant for it! new Argument[0], the object, is entirely immutable. You need to make a single instance, once, ever, for an entire JVM run. The JVM itself does this; try it: List.of() returns the 'singleton empty list'. So does Collections.emptyList() for the old timers in the crowd. All lists 'made' with Collections.emptyList() are actually just refs to the same singleton 'empty list' object. This works because the lists these methods make are entirely immutable.
The same can and generally should apply to you!
If you ever write this:
if (x == null || x.isEmpty())
then you messed up if we go by the first definition of null, and you're simply writing needlessly wordy, but correct, code if we go by the second
definition. You've come up with a solution to address this, but there's a much, much better one!
Find the place where x got its value, and address the boneheaded code that decided to return null instead of "". You should in fact emphatically NOT be adding null checks to your code, because it's far too easy to get into this mode where you almost always do it, and therefore you rarely actually have null refs, but it's just swiss cheese laid on top of each other: There may still be holes, and then you get NPEs. Better to never check so you get NPEs very quickly in the development process - somebody returned null where they should be returning "" instead.
Sometimes the code that made the bad null ref is out of your control. In that case, do the same thing you should always do when working with badly designed APIs: Fix it ASAP. Write a wrapper if you have to. But if you can commit a fix, do that instead. This may require making such an object.
Sentinels are awesome
Sometimes sentinel objects (objects that 'stand in' for this default / blank take, such as "" for strings, List.of() for lists, etc) can be a bit more fancy than this. For example, one can imagine using LocalDate.of(1800, 1, 1) as sentinel for a missing birthdate, but do note that this instance is not a great idea. It does crazy stuff. For example, if you write code to determine the age of a person, then it starts giving completely wrong answers (which is significantly worse than throwing an exception. With the exception you know you have a bug faster and you get a stacktrace that lets you find it in literally 500 milliseconds (just click the line, voila. That is the exact line you need to look at right now to fix the problem). It'll say someone is 212 years old all of a sudden.
But you could make a LocalDate object that does some things (such as: It CAN print itself; sentinel.toString() doesn't throw NPE but prints something like 'unset date'), but for other things it will throw an exception. For example, .getYear() would throw.
You can also make more than one sentinel. If you want a sentinel that means 'far future', that's trivially made (LocalDate.of(9999, 12, 31) is pretty good already), and you can also have one as 'for as long as anyone remembers', e.g. 'distant past'. That's cool, and not something your proposal could ever do!
You will have to deal with the consequences though. In some small ways the java ecosystem's definitions don't mesh with this, and null would perhaps have been a better standin. For example, the equals contract clearly states that a.equals(a) must always hold, and yet, just like in SQL NULL = NULL isn't TRUE, you probably don't want missingDate.equals(missingDate) to be true; that's conflating the meta with the value: You can't actually tell me that 2 missing dates are equal. By definition: The dates are missing. You do not know if they are equal or not. It is not an answerable question. And yet we can't implement the equals method of missingDate as return false; (or, better yet, as you also can't really know they aren't equal either, throw an exception) as that breaks contract (equals methods must have the identity property and must not throw, as per its own javadoc, so we can't do either of those things).
Dealing with null better
There are a few things that make dealing with null a lot easier:
Annotations: APIs can and should be very clear in communicating when their methods can return null and what that means. Annotations to turn that documentation into compiler-checked documentation is awesome. Your IDE can start warning you, as you type, that null may occur and what that means, and will say so in auto-complete dialogs too. And it's all entirely backwards compatible in all senses of the word: No need to start considering giant swaths of the java ecosystem as 'obsolete' (unlike Optional, which mostly sucks).
Optional, except this is a non-solution. The type isn't orthogonal (you can't write a method that takes a List<MaybeOptionalorNot<String>> that works on both List<String> and List<Optional<String>>, even though a method that checks the 'is it some or is it none?' state of all list members and doesn't add anything (except maybe shuffle things around) would work equally on both methods, and yet you just can't write it. This is bad, and it means all usages of optional must be 'unrolled' on the spot, and e.g. Optional<X> should show up pretty much never ever as a parameter type or field type. Only as return types and even that is dubious - I'd just stick to what Optional was made for: As return type of Stream terminal operations.
Adopting it also isn't backwards compatible. For example, hashMap.get(key) should, in all possible interpretations of what Optional is for, obviously return an Optional<V>, but it doesn't, and it never will, because java doesn't break backwards compatibility lightly and breaking that is obviously far too heavy an impact. The only real solution is to introduce java.util2 and a complete incompatible redesign of the collections API, which is splitting the java ecosystem in twain. Ask the python community (python2 vs. python3) how well that goes.
Use sentinels, use them heavily, make them available. If I were designing LocalDate, I'd have created LocalDate.FAR_FUTURE and LocalDate_DISTANT_PAST (but let it be clear that I think Stephen Colebourne, who designed JSR310, is perhaps the best API designer out there. But nothing is so perfect that it can't be complained about, right?)
Use API calls that allow defaulting. Map has this.
Do NOT write this code:
String phoneNr = phoneNumbers.get(userId);
if (phoneNr == null) return "Unknown phone number";
return phoneNr;
But DO write this:
return phoneNumbers.getOrDefault(userId, "Unknown phone number");
Don't write:
Map<Course, List<Student>> participants;
void enrollStudent(Student student) {
List<Student> participating = participants.get(econ101);
if (participating == null) {
participating = new ArrayList<Student>();
participants.put(econ101, participating);
}
participating.add(student);
}
instead write:
Map<Course, List<Student>> participants;
void enrollStudent(Student student) {
participants.computeIfAbsent(econ101,
k -> new ArrayList<Student>())
.add(student);
}
and, crucially, if you are writing APIs, ensure things like getOrDefault, computeIfAbsent, etc. are available so that the users of your API don't have to deal with null nearly as much.

You can write a static test() method like this:
static <T> boolean test(T object, Predicate<T> validation) {
return object != null && validation.test(object);
}
and
static class Foo {
public boolean isValid() {
return true;
}
}
static Foo dosomething() {
return new Foo();
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
Foo a = dosomething();
if (test(a, Foo::isValid))
System.out.println("OK");
else
System.out.println("NG");
}
output:
OK
If dosomething() returns null, it prints NG

Not exactly, but take a look at Optional:
Optional.ofNullable(dosomething())
.filter(Foo::isValid)
.ifPresent(a -> ...);

Avoid duplicated code 'cause of null objects? [duplicate]

I use x != null to avoid NullPointerException. Is there an alternative?
if (x != null) {
// ...
}

This to me sounds like a reasonably common problem that junior to intermediate developers tend to face at some point: they either don't know or don't trust the contracts they are participating in and defensively overcheck for nulls. Additionally, when writing their own code, they tend to rely on returning nulls to indicate something thus requiring the caller to check for nulls.
To put this another way, there are two instances where null checking comes up:
Where null is a valid response in terms of the contract; and
Where it isn't a valid response.
(2) is easy. As of Java 1.7 you can use Objects.requireNonNull(foo). (If you are stuck with a previous version then assertions may be a good alternative.)
"Proper" usage of this method would be like below. The method returns the object passed into it and throws a NullPointerException if the object is null. This means that the returned value is always non-null. The method is primarily intended for validating parameters.
public Foo(Bar bar) {
this.bar = Objects.requireNonNull(bar);
}
It can also be used like an assertion though since it throws an exception if the object is null. In both uses, a message can be added which will be shown in the exception. Below is using it like an assertion and providing a message.
Objects.requireNonNull(someobject, "if someobject is null then something is wrong");
someobject.doCalc();
Generally throwing a specific exception like NullPointerException when a value is null but shouldn't be is favorable to throwing a more general exception like AssertionError. This is the approach the Java library takes; favoring NullPointerException over IllegalArgumentException when an argument is not allowed to be null.
(1) is a little harder. If you have no control over the code you're calling then you're stuck. If null is a valid response, you have to check for it.
If it's code that you do control, however (and this is often the case), then it's a different story. Avoid using nulls as a response. With methods that return collections, it's easy: return empty collections (or arrays) instead of nulls pretty much all the time.
With non-collections it might be harder. Consider this as an example: if you have these interfaces:
public interface Action {
void doSomething();
}
public interface Parser {
Action findAction(String userInput);
}
where Parser takes raw user input and finds something to do, perhaps if you're implementing a command line interface for something. Now you might make the contract that it returns null if there's no appropriate action. That leads the null checking you're talking about.
An alternative solution is to never return null and instead use the Null Object pattern:
public class MyParser implements Parser {
private static Action DO_NOTHING = new Action() {
public void doSomething() { /* do nothing */ }
};
public Action findAction(String userInput) {
// ...
if ( /* we can't find any actions */ ) {
return DO_NOTHING;
}
}
}
Compare:
Parser parser = ParserFactory.getParser();
if (parser == null) {
// now what?
// this would be an example of where null isn't (or shouldn't be) a valid response
}
Action action = parser.findAction(someInput);
if (action == null) {
// do nothing
} else {
action.doSomething();
}
to
ParserFactory.getParser().findAction(someInput).doSomething();
which is a much better design because it leads to more concise code.
That said, perhaps it is entirely appropriate for the findAction() method to throw an Exception with a meaningful error message -- especially in this case where you are relying on user input. It would be much better for the findAction method to throw an Exception than for the calling method to blow up with a simple NullPointerException with no explanation.
try {
ParserFactory.getParser().findAction(someInput).doSomething();
} catch(ActionNotFoundException anfe) {
userConsole.err(anfe.getMessage());
}
Or if you think the try/catch mechanism is too ugly, rather than Do Nothing your default action should provide feedback to the user.
public Action findAction(final String userInput) {
/* Code to return requested Action if found */
return new Action() {
public void doSomething() {
userConsole.err("Action not found: " + userInput);
}
}
}

If you use (or planning to use) a Java IDE like JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse or Netbeans or a tool like findbugs then you can use annotations to solve this problem.
Basically, you've got #Nullable and #NotNull.
You can use in method and parameters, like this:
#NotNull public static String helloWorld() {
return "Hello World";
}
or
#Nullable public static String helloWorld() {
return "Hello World";
}
The second example won't compile (in IntelliJ IDEA).
When you use the first helloWorld() function in another piece of code:
public static void main(String[] args)
{
String result = helloWorld();
if(result != null) {
System.out.println(result);
}
}
Now the IntelliJ IDEA compiler will tell you that the check is useless, since the helloWorld() function won't return null, ever.
Using parameter
void someMethod(#NotNull someParameter) { }
if you write something like:
someMethod(null);
This won't compile.
Last example using #Nullable
#Nullable iWantToDestroyEverything() { return null; }
Doing this
iWantToDestroyEverything().something();
And you can be sure that this won't happen. :)
It's a nice way to let the compiler check something more than it usually does and to enforce your contracts to be stronger. Unfortunately, it's not supported by all the compilers.
In IntelliJ IDEA 10.5 and on, they added support for any other #Nullable #NotNull implementations.
See blog post More flexible and configurable #Nullable/#NotNull annotations.

If null-values are not allowed
If your method is called externally, start with something like this:
public void method(Object object) {
if (object == null) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("...");
}
Then, in the rest of that method, you'll know that object is not null.
If it is an internal method (not part of an API), just document that it cannot be null, and that's it.
Example:
public String getFirst3Chars(String text) {
return text.subString(0, 3);
}
However, if your method just passes the value on, and the next method passes it on etc. it could get problematic. In that case you may want to check the argument as above.
If null is allowed
This really depends. If find that I often do something like this:
if (object == null) {
// something
} else {
// something else
}
So I branch, and do two completely different things. There is no ugly code snippet, because I really need to do two different things depending on the data. For example, should I work on the input, or should I calculate a good default value?
It's actually rare for me to use the idiom "if (object != null && ...".
It may be easier to give you examples, if you show examples of where you typically use the idiom.

Wow, I almost hate to add another answer when we have 57 different ways to recommend the NullObject pattern, but I think that some people interested in this question may like to know that there is a proposal on the table for Java 7 to add "null-safe handling"—a streamlined syntax for if-not-equal-null logic.
The example given by Alex Miller looks like this:
public String getPostcode(Person person) {
return person?.getAddress()?.getPostcode();
}
The ?. means only de-reference the left identifier if it is not null, otherwise evaluate the remainder of the expression as null. Some people, like Java Posse member Dick Wall and the voters at Devoxx really love this proposal, but there is opposition too, on the grounds that it will actually encourage more use of null as a sentinel value.
Update: An official proposal for a null-safe operator in Java 7 has been submitted under Project Coin. The syntax is a little different than the example above, but it's the same notion.
Update: The null-safe operator proposal didn't make it into Project Coin. So, you won't be seeing this syntax in Java 7.

If undefined values are not permitted:
You might configure your IDE to warn you about potential null dereferencing. E.g. in Eclipse, see Preferences > Java > Compiler > Errors/Warnings/Null analysis.
If undefined values are permitted:
If you want to define a new API where undefined values make sense, use the Option Pattern (may be familiar from functional languages). It has the following advantages:
It is stated explicitly in the API whether an input or output exists or not.
The compiler forces you to handle the "undefined" case.
Option is a monad, so there is no need for verbose null checking, just use map/foreach/getOrElse or a similar combinator to safely use the value (example).
Java 8 has a built-in Optional class (recommended); for earlier versions, there are library alternatives, for example Guava's Optional or FunctionalJava's Option. But like many functional-style patterns, using Option in Java (even 8) results in quite some boilerplate, which you can reduce using a less verbose JVM language, e.g. Scala or Xtend.
If you have to deal with an API which might return nulls, you can't do much in Java. Xtend and Groovy have the Elvis operator ?: and the null-safe dereference operator ?., but note that this returns null in case of a null reference, so it just "defers" the proper handling of null.

Only for this situation -
Not checking if a variable is null before invoking an equals method (a string compare example below):
if ( foo.equals("bar") ) {
// ...
}
will result in a NullPointerException if foo doesn't exist.
You can avoid that if you compare your Strings like this:
if ( "bar".equals(foo) ) {
// ...
}

With Java 8 comes the new java.util.Optional class that arguably solves some of the problem. One can at least say that it improves the readability of the code, and in the case of public APIs make the API's contract clearer to the client developer.
They work like that:
An optional object for a given type (Fruit) is created as the return type of a method. It can be empty or contain a Fruit object:
public static Optional<Fruit> find(String name, List<Fruit> fruits) {
for (Fruit fruit : fruits) {
if (fruit.getName().equals(name)) {
return Optional.of(fruit);
}
}
return Optional.empty();
}
Now look at this code where we search a list of Fruit (fruits) for a given Fruit instance:
Optional<Fruit> found = find("lemon", fruits);
if (found.isPresent()) {
Fruit fruit = found.get();
String name = fruit.getName();
}
You can use the map() operator to perform a computation on--or extract a value from--an optional object. orElse() lets you provide a fallback for missing values.
String nameOrNull = find("lemon", fruits)
.map(f -> f.getName())
.orElse("empty-name");
Of course, the check for null/empty value is still necessary, but at least the developer is conscious that the value might be empty and the risk of forgetting to check is limited.
In an API built from scratch using Optional whenever a return value might be empty, and returning a plain object only when it cannot be null (convention), the client code might abandon null checks on simple object return values...
Of course Optional could also be used as a method argument, perhaps a better way to indicate optional arguments than 5 or 10 overloading methods in some cases.
Optional offers other convenient methods, such as orElse that allow the use of a default value, and ifPresent that works with lambda expressions.
I invite you to read this article (my main source for writing this answer) in which the NullPointerException (and in general null pointer) problematic as well as the (partial) solution brought by Optional are well explained: Java Optional Objects.

Depending on what kind of objects you are checking you may be able to use some of the classes in the apache commons such as: apache commons lang and apache commons collections
Example:
String foo;
...
if( StringUtils.isBlank( foo ) ) {
///do something
}
or (depending on what you need to check):
String foo;
...
if( StringUtils.isEmpty( foo ) ) {
///do something
}
The StringUtils class is only one of many; there are quite a few good classes in the commons that do null safe manipulation.
Here follows an example of how you can use null vallidation in JAVA when you include apache library(commons-lang-2.4.jar)
public DOCUMENT read(String xml, ValidationEventHandler validationEventHandler) {
Validate.notNull(validationEventHandler,"ValidationHandler not Injected");
return read(new StringReader(xml), true, validationEventHandler);
}
And if you are using Spring, Spring also has the same functionality in its package, see library(spring-2.4.6.jar)
Example on how to use this static classf from spring(org.springframework.util.Assert)
Assert.notNull(validationEventHandler,"ValidationHandler not Injected");

If you consider an object should not be null (or it is a bug) use an assert.
If your method doesn't accept null params say it in the javadoc and use an assert.
You have to check for object != null only if you want to handle the case where the object may be null...
There is a proposal to add new annotations in Java7 to help with null / notnull params:
http://tech.puredanger.com/java7/#jsr308

I'm a fan of "fail fast" code. Ask yourself - are you doing something useful in the case where the parameter is null? If you don't have a clear answer for what your code should do in that case... i.e. - it should never be null in the first place, then ignore it and allow a NullPointerException to be thrown. The calling code will make just as much sense of an NPE as it would an IllegalArgumentException, but it'll be easier for the developer to debug and understand what went wrong if an NPE is thrown rather than your code attempting to execute some other unexpected contingency logic - which ultimately results in the application failing anyway.

Sometimes, you have methods that operate on its parameters that define a symmetric operation:
a.f(b); <-> b.f(a);
If you know b can never be null, you can just swap it. It is most useful for equals:
Instead of foo.equals("bar"); better do "bar".equals(foo);.

Rather than Null Object Pattern -- which has its uses -- you might consider situations where the null object is a bug.
When the exception is thrown, examine the stack trace and work through the bug.

The Google collections framework offers a good and elegant way to achieve the null check.
There is a method in a library class like this:
static <T> T checkNotNull(T e) {
if (e == null) {
throw new NullPointerException();
}
return e;
}
And the usage is (with import static):
...
void foo(int a, Person p) {
if (checkNotNull(p).getAge() > a) {
...
}
else {
...
}
}
...
Or in your example:
checkNotNull(someobject).doCalc();

Null is not a 'problem'. It is an integral part of a complete modeling tool set. Software aims to model the complexity of the world and null bears its burden. Null indicates 'No data' or 'Unknown' in Java and the like. So it is appropriate to use nulls for these purposes. I don't prefer the 'Null object' pattern; I think it rise the 'who will guard
the guardians' problem.
If you ask me what is the name of my girlfriend I'll tell you that I have no girlfriend. In the Java language I'll return null.
An alternative would be to throw meaningful exception to indicate some problem that can't be (or don't want to be) solved right there and delegate it somewhere higher in the stack to retry or report data access error to the user.
For an 'unknown question' give 'unknown answer'. (Be null-safe where this is correct from business point of view) Checking arguments for null once inside a method before usage relieves multiple callers from checking them before a call.
public Photo getPhotoOfThePerson(Person person) {
if (person == null)
return null;
// Grabbing some resources or intensive calculation
// using person object anyhow.
}
Previous leads to normal logic flow to get no photo of a non-existent girlfriend from my photo library.
getPhotoOfThePerson(me.getGirlfriend())
And it fits with new coming Java API (looking forward)
getPhotoByName(me.getGirlfriend()?.getName())
While it is rather 'normal business flow' not to find photo stored into the DB for some person, I used to use pairs like below for some other cases
public static MyEnum parseMyEnum(String value); // throws IllegalArgumentException
public static MyEnum parseMyEnumOrNull(String value);
And don't loathe to type <alt> + <shift> + <j> (generate javadoc in Eclipse) and write three additional words for you public API. This will be more than enough for all but those who don't read documentation.
/**
* #return photo or null
*/
or
/**
* #return photo, never null
*/
This is rather theoretical case and in most cases you should prefer java null safe API (in case it will be released in another 10 years), but NullPointerException is subclass of an Exception. Thus it is a form of Throwable that indicates conditions that a reasonable application might want to catch (javadoc)! To use the first most advantage of exceptions and separate error-handling code from 'regular' code (according to creators of Java) it is appropriate, as for me, to catch NullPointerException.
public Photo getGirlfriendPhoto() {
try {
return appContext.getPhotoDataSource().getPhotoByName(me.getGirlfriend().getName());
} catch (NullPointerException e) {
return null;
}
}
Questions could arise:
Q. What if getPhotoDataSource() returns null?
A. It is up to business logic. If I fail to find a photo album I'll show you no photos. What if appContext is not initialized? This method's business logic puts up with this. If the same logic should be more strict then throwing an exception it is part of the business logic and explicit check for null should be used (case 3). The new Java Null-safe API fits better here to specify selectively what implies and what does not imply to be initialized to be fail-fast in case of programmer errors.
Q. Redundant code could be executed and unnecessary resources could be grabbed.
A. It could take place if getPhotoByName() would try to open a database connection, create PreparedStatement and use the person name as an SQL parameter at last. The approach for an unknown question gives an unknown answer (case 1) works here. Before grabbing resources the method should check parameters and return 'unknown' result if needed.
Q. This approach has a performance penalty due to the try closure opening.
A. Software should be easy to understand and modify firstly. Only after this, one could think about performance, and only if needed! and where needed! (source), and many others).
PS. This approach will be as reasonable to use as the separate error-handling code from "regular" code principle is reasonable to use in some place. Consider the next example:
public SomeValue calculateSomeValueUsingSophisticatedLogic(Predicate predicate) {
try {
Result1 result1 = performSomeCalculation(predicate);
Result2 result2 = performSomeOtherCalculation(result1.getSomeProperty());
Result3 result3 = performThirdCalculation(result2.getSomeProperty());
Result4 result4 = performLastCalculation(result3.getSomeProperty());
return result4.getSomeProperty();
} catch (NullPointerException e) {
return null;
}
}
public SomeValue calculateSomeValueUsingSophisticatedLogic(Predicate predicate) {
SomeValue result = null;
if (predicate != null) {
Result1 result1 = performSomeCalculation(predicate);
if (result1 != null && result1.getSomeProperty() != null) {
Result2 result2 = performSomeOtherCalculation(result1.getSomeProperty());
if (result2 != null && result2.getSomeProperty() != null) {
Result3 result3 = performThirdCalculation(result2.getSomeProperty());
if (result3 != null && result3.getSomeProperty() != null) {
Result4 result4 = performLastCalculation(result3.getSomeProperty());
if (result4 != null) {
result = result4.getSomeProperty();
}
}
}
}
}
return result;
}
PPS. For those fast to downvote (and not so fast to read documentation) I would like to say that I've never caught a null-pointer exception (NPE) in my life. But this possibility was intentionally designed by the Java creators because NPE is a subclass of Exception. We have a precedent in Java history when ThreadDeath is an Error not because it is actually an application error, but solely because it was not intended to be caught! How much NPE fits to be an Error than ThreadDeath! But it is not.
Check for 'No data' only if business logic implies it.
public void updatePersonPhoneNumber(Long personId, String phoneNumber) {
if (personId == null)
return;
DataSource dataSource = appContext.getStuffDataSource();
Person person = dataSource.getPersonById(personId);
if (person != null) {
person.setPhoneNumber(phoneNumber);
dataSource.updatePerson(person);
} else {
Person = new Person(personId);
person.setPhoneNumber(phoneNumber);
dataSource.insertPerson(person);
}
}
and
public void updatePersonPhoneNumber(Long personId, String phoneNumber) {
if (personId == null)
return;
DataSource dataSource = appContext.getStuffDataSource();
Person person = dataSource.getPersonById(personId);
if (person == null)
throw new SomeReasonableUserException("What are you thinking about ???");
person.setPhoneNumber(phoneNumber);
dataSource.updatePerson(person);
}
If appContext or dataSource is not initialized unhandled runtime NullPointerException will kill current thread and will be processed by Thread.defaultUncaughtExceptionHandler (for you to define and use your favorite logger or other notification mechanizm). If not set, ThreadGroup#uncaughtException will print stacktrace to system err. One should monitor application error log and open Jira issue for each unhandled exception which in fact is application error. Programmer should fix bug somewhere in initialization stuff.

Java 7 has a new java.util.Objects utility class on which there is a requireNonNull() method. All this does is throw a NullPointerException if its argument is null, but it cleans up the code a bit. Example:
Objects.requireNonNull(someObject);
someObject.doCalc();
The method is most useful for checking just before an assignment in a constructor, where each use of it can save three lines of code:
Parent(Child child) {
if (child == null) {
throw new NullPointerException("child");
}
this.child = child;
}
becomes
Parent(Child child) {
this.child = Objects.requireNonNull(child, "child");
}

Ultimately, the only way to completely solve this problem is by using a different programming language:
In Objective-C, you can do the equivalent of invoking a method on nil, and absolutely nothing will happen. This makes most null checks unnecessary, but it can make errors much harder to diagnose.
In Nice, a Java-derived language, there are two versions of all types: a potentially-null version and a not-null version. You can only invoke methods on not-null types. Potentially-null types can be converted to not-null types through explicit checking for null. This makes it much easier to know where null checks are necessary and where they aren't.

Common "problem" in Java indeed.
First, my thoughts on this:
I consider that it is bad to "eat" something when NULL was passed where NULL isn't a valid value. If you're not exiting the method with some sort of error then it means nothing went wrong in your method which is not true. Then you probably return null in this case, and in the receiving method you again check for null, and it never ends, and you end up with "if != null", etc..
So, IMHO, null must be a critical error which prevents further execution (that is, where null is not a valid value).
The way I solve this problem is this:
First, I follow this convention:
All public methods / API always check its arguments for null
All private methods do not check for null since they are controlled methods (just let die with nullpointer exception in case it wasn't handled above)
The only other methods which do not check for null are utility methods. They are public, but if you call them for some reason, you know what parameters you pass. This is like trying to boil water in the kettle without providing water...
And finally, in the code, the first line of the public method goes like this:
ValidationUtils.getNullValidator().addParam(plans, "plans").addParam(persons, "persons").validate();
Note that addParam() returns self, so that you can add more parameters to check.
Method validate() will throw checked ValidationException if any of the parameters is null (checked or unchecked is more a design/taste issue, but my ValidationException is checked).
void validate() throws ValidationException;
The message will contain the following text if, for example, "plans" is null:
"Illegal argument value null is encountered for parameter [plans]"
As you can see, the second value in the addParam() method (string) is needed for the user message, because you cannot easily detect passed-in variable name, even with reflection (not subject of this post anyway...).
And yes, we know that beyond this line we will no longer encounter a null value so we just safely invoke methods on those objects.
This way, the code is clean, easy maintainable and readable.

Asking that question points out that you may be interested in error handling strategies. How and where to handle errors is a pervasive architectural question. There are several ways to do this.
My favorite: allow the Exceptions to ripple through - catch them at the 'main loop' or in some other function with the appropriate responsibilities. Checking for error conditions and handling them appropriately can be seen as a specialized responsibility.
Sure do have a look at Aspect Oriented Programming, too - they have neat ways to insert if( o == null ) handleNull() into your bytecode.

In addition to using assert you can use the following:
if (someobject == null) {
// Handle null here then move on.
}
This is slightly better than:
if (someobject != null) {
.....
.....
.....
}

Just don't ever use null. Don't allow it.
In my classes, most fields and local variables have non-null default values, and I add contract statements (always-on asserts) everywhere in the code to make sure this is being enforced (since it's more succinct, and more expressive than letting it come up as an NPE and then having to resolve the line number, etc.).
Once I adopted this practice, I noticed that the problems seemed to fix themselves. You'd catch things much earlier in the development process just by accident and realize you had a weak spot.. and more importantly.. it helps encapsulate different modules' concerns, different modules can 'trust' each other, and no more littering the code with if = null else constructs!
This is defensive programming and results in much cleaner code in the long run. Always sanitize the data, e.g. here by enforcing rigid standards, and the problems go away.
class C {
private final MyType mustBeSet;
public C(MyType mything) {
mustBeSet=Contract.notNull(mything);
}
private String name = "<unknown>";
public void setName(String s) {
name = Contract.notNull(s);
}
}
class Contract {
public static <T> T notNull(T t) { if (t == null) { throw new ContractException("argument must be non-null"); return t; }
}
The contracts are like mini-unit tests which are always running, even in production, and when things fail, you know why, rather than a random NPE you have to somehow figure out.

Guava, a very useful core library by Google, has a nice and useful API to avoid nulls. I find UsingAndAvoidingNullExplained very helpful.
As explained in the wiki:
Optional<T> is a way of replacing a nullable T reference with a
non-null value. An Optional may either contain a non-null T reference
(in which case we say the reference is "present"), or it may contain
nothing (in which case we say the reference is "absent"). It is never
said to "contain null."
Usage:
Optional<Integer> possible = Optional.of(5);
possible.isPresent(); // returns true
possible.get(); // returns 5

This is a very common problem for every Java developer. So there is official support in Java 8 to address these issues without cluttered code.
Java 8 has introduced java.util.Optional<T>. It is a container that may or may not hold a non-null value. Java 8 has given a safer way to handle an object whose value may be null in some of the cases. It is inspired from the ideas of Haskell and Scala.
In a nutshell, the Optional class includes methods to explicitly deal with the cases where a value is present or absent. However, the advantage compared to null references is that the Optional<T> class forces you to think about the case when the value is not present. As a consequence, you can prevent unintended null pointer exceptions.
In above example we have a home service factory that returns a handle to multiple appliances available in the home. But these services may or may not be available/functional; it means it may result in a NullPointerException. Instead of adding a null if condition before using any service, let's wrap it in to Optional<Service>.
WRAPPING TO OPTION<T>
Let's consider a method to get a reference of a service from a factory. Instead of returning the service reference, wrap it with Optional. It lets the API user know that the returned service may or may not available/functional, use defensively
public Optional<Service> getRefrigertorControl() {
Service s = new RefrigeratorService();
//...
return Optional.ofNullable(s);
}
As you see Optional.ofNullable() provides an easy way to get the reference wrapped. There are another ways to get the reference of Optional, either Optional.empty() & Optional.of(). One for returning an empty object instead of retuning null and the other to wrap a non-nullable object, respectively.
SO HOW EXACTLY IT HELPS TO AVOID A NULL CHECK?
Once you have wrapped a reference object, Optional provides many useful methods to invoke methods on a wrapped reference without NPE.
Optional ref = homeServices.getRefrigertorControl();
ref.ifPresent(HomeServices::switchItOn);
Optional.ifPresent invokes the given Consumer with a reference if it is a non-null value. Otherwise, it does nothing.
#FunctionalInterface
public interface Consumer<T>
Represents an operation that accepts a single input argument and returns no result. Unlike most other functional interfaces, Consumer is expected to operate via side-effects.
It is so clean and easy to understand. In the above code example, HomeService.switchOn(Service) gets invoked if the Optional holding reference is non-null.
We use the ternary operator very often for checking null condition and return an alternative value or default value. Optional provides another way to handle the same condition without checking null. Optional.orElse(defaultObj) returns defaultObj if the Optional has a null value. Let's use this in our sample code:
public static Optional<HomeServices> get() {
service = Optional.of(service.orElse(new HomeServices()));
return service;
}
Now HomeServices.get() does same thing, but in a better way. It checks whether the service is already initialized of not. If it is then return the same or create a new New service. Optional<T>.orElse(T) helps to return a default value.
Finally, here is our NPE as well as null check-free code:
import java.util.Optional;
public class HomeServices {
private static final int NOW = 0;
private static Optional<HomeServices> service;
public static Optional<HomeServices> get() {
service = Optional.of(service.orElse(new HomeServices()));
return service;
}
public Optional<Service> getRefrigertorControl() {
Service s = new RefrigeratorService();
//...
return Optional.ofNullable(s);
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
/* Get Home Services handle */
Optional<HomeServices> homeServices = HomeServices.get();
if(homeServices != null) {
Optional<Service> refrigertorControl = homeServices.get().getRefrigertorControl();
refrigertorControl.ifPresent(HomeServices::switchItOn);
}
}
public static void switchItOn(Service s){
//...
}
}
The complete post is NPE as well as Null check-free code … Really?.

I like articles from Nat Pryce. Here are the links:
Avoiding Nulls with Polymorphic Dispatch
Avoiding Nulls with "Tell, Don't Ask" Style
In the articles there is also a link to a Git repository for a Java Maybe Type which I find interesting, but I don't think it alone could decrease the
checking code bloat. After doing some research on the Internet, I think != null code bloat could be decreased mainly by careful design.

I've tried the NullObjectPattern but for me is not always the best way to go. There are sometimes when a "no action" is not appropiate.
NullPointerException is a Runtime exception that means it's developers fault and with enough experience it tells you exactly where is the error.
Now to the answer:
Try to make all your attributes and its accessors as private as possible or avoid to expose them to the clients at all. You can have the argument values in the constructor of course, but by reducing the scope you don't let the client class pass an invalid value. If you need to modify the values, you can always create a new object. You check the values in the constructor only once and in the rest of the methods you can be almost sure that the values are not null.
Of course, experience is the better way to understand and apply this suggestion.
Byte!

Probably the best alternative for Java 8 or newer is to use the Optional class.
Optional stringToUse = Optional.of("optional is there");
stringToUse.ifPresent(System.out::println);
This is especially handy for long chains of possible null values. Example:
Optional<Integer> i = Optional.ofNullable(wsObject.getFoo())
.map(f -> f.getBar())
.map(b -> b.getBaz())
.map(b -> b.getInt());
Example on how to throw exception on null:
Optional optionalCarNull = Optional.ofNullable(someNull);
optionalCarNull.orElseThrow(IllegalStateException::new);
Java 7 introduced the Objects.requireNonNull method which can be handy when something should be checked for non-nullness. Example:
String lowerVal = Objects.requireNonNull(someVar, "input cannot be null or empty").toLowerCase();

May I answer it more generally!
We usually face this issue when the methods get the parameters in the way we not expected (bad method call is programmer's fault). For example: you expect to get an object, instead you get a null. You expect to get an String with at least one character, instead you get an empty String ...
So there is no difference between:
if(object == null){
//you called my method badly!
}
or
if(str.length() == 0){
//you called my method badly again!
}
They both want to make sure that we received valid parameters, before we do any other functions.
As mentioned in some other answers, to avoid above problems you can follow the Design by contract pattern. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_contract.
To implement this pattern in java, you can use core java annotations like javax.annotation.NotNull or use more sophisticated libraries like Hibernate Validator.
Just a sample:
getCustomerAccounts(#NotEmpty String customerId,#Size(min = 1) String accountType)
Now you can safely develop the core function of your method without needing to check input parameters, they guard your methods from unexpected parameters.
You can go a step further and make sure that only valid pojos could be created in your application. (sample from hibernate validator site)
public class Car {
#NotNull
private String manufacturer;
#NotNull
#Size(min = 2, max = 14)
private String licensePlate;
#Min(2)
private int seatCount;
// ...
}

I highly disregard answers that suggest using the null objects in every situation. This pattern may break the contract and bury problems deeper and deeper instead of solving them, not mentioning that used inappropriately will create another pile of boilerplate code that will require future maintenance.
In reality if something returned from a method can be null and the calling code has to make decision upon that, there should an earlier call that ensures the state.
Also keep in mind, that null object pattern will be memory hungry if used without care. For this - the instance of a NullObject should be shared between owners, and not be an unigue instance for each of these.
Also I would not recommend using this pattern where the type is meant to be a primitive type representation - like mathematical entities, that are not scalars: vectors, matrices, complex numbers and POD(Plain Old Data) objects, which are meant to hold state in form of Java built-in types. In the latter case you would end up calling getter methods with arbitrary results. For example what should a NullPerson.getName() method return?
It's worth considering such cases in order to avoid absurd results.

Never initialise variables to null.
If (1) is not possible, initialise all collections and arrays to empty collections/arrays.
Doing this in your own code and you can avoid != null checks.
Most of the time null checks seem to guard loops over collections or arrays, so just initialise them empty, you won't need any null checks.
// Bad
ArrayList<String> lemmings;
String[] names;
void checkLemmings() {
if (lemmings != null) for(lemming: lemmings) {
// do something
}
}
// Good
ArrayList<String> lemmings = new ArrayList<String>();
String[] names = {};
void checkLemmings() {
for(lemming: lemmings) {
// do something
}
}
There is a tiny overhead in this, but it's worth it for cleaner code and less NullPointerExceptions.

This is the most common error occurred for most of the developers.
We have number of ways to handle this.
Approach 1:
org.apache.commons.lang.Validate //using apache framework
notNull(Object object, String message)
Approach 2:
if(someObject!=null){ // simply checking against null
}
Approach 3:
#isNull #Nullable // using annotation based validation
Approach 4:
// by writing static method and calling it across whereever we needed to check the validation
static <T> T isNull(someObject e){
if(e == null){
throw new NullPointerException();
}
return e;
}

Java 8 has introduced a new class Optional in java.util package.
Advantages of Java 8 Optional:
1.) Null checks are not required.
2.) No more NullPointerException at run-time.
3.) We can develop clean and neat APIs.
Optional - A container object which may or may not contain a non-null value. If a value is present, isPresent() will return true and get() will return the value.
For more details find here oracle docs :-
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/Optional.html

Why not have Jave methods return a tuple instead of an object reference (or null)?

Typically Java methods look like:
public <U,V> U doSomething(V aReference) {
// Do something
}
This typically means that the method doSomething() returns a null if it
fails (for whatever reason) or a valid object reference. In some cases the
"valid object reference" may itself be null. For example, the method
aMap.get(k) may return null if there is no key k or if there is a key
k but its corresponding value is null. Confusion!
Not to mention NullPointerExceptions if 50% of your LOC isn't just
null-checking.
What's wrong with methods looking like this:
public <T> ReturnTuple<T> doSomething(V aReference) {
T anotherObjRef = getValidObjT();
if (successful) {
return ReturnTuple.getSuccessTuple(anotherObjRef);
} else {
return ReturnTuple.getFailureTuple("aReference can't be null");
}
}
where the class ReturnTuple<T> is defined something like:
class ReturnTuple<T> {
private boolean success;
// Read only if success == true
private T returnValue;
// Read only if success == false
private String failureReason;
// Private constructors, getters, setters & other convenience methods
public static <T> ReturnTuple<T> getSuccessTuple(T retVal) {
// This code is trivial
}
public static <T> ReturnTuple<T> getFailureTuple(String failureReason) {
// This code is trivial
}
}
Then the calling code will look like:
ReturnTuple<T> rt = doSomething(v);
if (rt.isSuccess()) {
// yay!
} else {
// boo hoo!
}
So, my question is: why isn't this pattern more common? What is wrong with it?
Keep in mind I am not asking for a critique of this exact code, but for a
critique of this general idea.
Please note: the point here is not to get the code above to compile, just to
discuss an idea. So please don't be too pedantic about code correctness :-).
Edit 1: Motivation
I guess I should have added this section from the beginning, but better late
than never...
Ever wished a method could return two values at once? Or that the returning
of a value could be de-linked from the ability to indicate success or
failure?
This could also promote the idea of a method being a neat-and-clean
self-contained unit (low coupling and high cohesion): handle all (or most)
exceptions generated during it's execution (not talking about exceptions
like IllegalArgumentException), discreetly log failure reasons (rather
than the ugly stack trace of an uncaught exception) and only bother the
caller with exactly the information required. IMHO this also promotes
information-hiding and encapsulation.
Done your best with testing, but when the code is deployed to the customer,
an uncaught exception's ugly stack trace makes it all look so
unprofessional.
Similar to the point above: you may have code that could possibly generate
20 different exceptions but you're catching only 5-7 of those. As we all
know, customers do the damndest things: rely on them to cause all the other
uncaught 13-15 exceptions :-). You end up looking bad when they see a big
stack trace (instead of a discrete failure reason added to the logs).
This is the difference (for example) between showing a stack trace to a
user in a web app vs. showing them a nicely formatted 5xx error page saying
something like: "There was an error and your request couldn't be completed.
Admins have been notified and will fix as soon as possible." etc.
This idea isn't entirely without merit as Java 8 provides the
Optional
class (as pointed out by #JBNizet) and Google's
Guava library also has an
Optional
class. This just takes that a little further.

This typically means that the method doSomething() returns a null if it fails
No, it does not mean that. It means that the method doSomething() may sometimes legally return null, without a failure. Java provides a powerful system for handling failures - namely, exception handling. This is how the API should indicate failures.
why isn't this [return a tuple] pattern more common? What is wrong with it?
The primary thing that is wrong with this pattern is that it is using a mechanism of reporting failures in a way that is foreign to Java. If your API runs into a failure, throw an exception. This saves you from creating twice as many objects as needed in "mainstream" cases, and keeps your APIs intuitively understandable to people who learned the Java class library well.
There are situations when returning a null can be interpreted both ways - as a failure, and as a legitimate return value. Looking up objects in associative containers provide a good example: when you supply a key that is not in the map, one could claim that that is a programming error and throw an exception (.NET class library does that) or claim that when the key is missing, the corresponding spot in the map contains the default value, i.e. a null - the way this is done in Java. In situations like that it is entirely acceptable to return a tuple. Java's Map decided against this, most likely to save on creating additional objects every time an object is requested from a Map.

Checked or Unchecked Exception [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Closed 13 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
When to choose checked and unchecked exceptions
Hello!
So, I'm still getting comfortable regarding when to throw a checked or unchecked exception. I would like to know what others think is the most appropriate in this case:
class Correlation<T>
{
private final T object1, object2;
private final double correlationCoefficient;
public Correlation(T object1, T object2, double correlationCoefficient)
{
if(Math.abs(correlationCoefficient) > 1.0 || (object1.equals(object2) && correlationCoefficient != 1.0))
throw new IllegalArgumentException();
this.object1 = object1;
this.object2 = object2;
this.correlationCoefficient = correlationCoefficient;
}
}
So, in this case, I would like to throw a runtime exception because I cannot easily recover from a situation where the user passes in bad data. I would like to point out beforehand that I have no control over the data being passed in. If I could, I would create an interface which guarantees that the conditional in the constructor is true. However, this is a convenience class for correlations that have already been computed, so I have to trust that the user is providing accurate information.
Okay, let me know what you all think!

I think this is the correct response. You are effectively doing barrier asserts, i.e. barrier checks, and if they are wrong you are refusing to create the entity. I would document with a java doc that you can throw an IllegalArgumentException, however outside of that, it looks correct.
Joshua Block has some great information regarding checked and unchecked exceptions. The basic premise is that, unless you absolutely want someone checking for the exception, you should throw an unchecked exception. Thinking this way can complicate some coding and return values, but in general it makes for cleaner, more efficient code. Use exceptions for exceptional cases, and things will work better for you.
Just my 2 cents.
Edit
Just to be clear, here is something like the java doc you should have:
/**
* <Something describing constructor, and what it does, ending with a period.>
*
* #param parameter <Describe the parameter - do one for each parameter of the constructor,
* and note which values may be illegal for that particular parameter.>
* #throws IllegalArgumentException <the case for the illegal argument exception.>

In my opinion, the answer hinges on:
Do you expect the caller to be able to recover gracefully?
Is this API intended for public or internal consumption?
Someone people will tell you that you should never use checked exceptions. That's purely subjective.

You should ALWAYS include an explanatory text in your exception. In this particular case you might even consider have TWO checks:
if(Math.abs(correlationCoefficient) > 1.0)
throw new IllegalArgumentException("abs(correlationCoefficient) > 1.0 - " + correlationCoefficient);
if((object1.equals(object2) && correlationCoefficient != 1.0))
throw new IllegalArgumentException("object1==object2, but correlationCoefficient != 1.0, " + correlationCoefficient);
This allows those who actually get to see the stacktrace to be able to identify the exact cause without having to look intimately at the code. A given exception should only be triggered by ONE condition, not several, since you will not be certain what happended. Also include all necessary information as this may be crucial if the error situation cannot be reproduced in a test scenario.

Avoiding NullPointerException in Java

I use x != null to avoid NullPointerException. Is there an alternative?
if (x != null) {
// ...
}

This to me sounds like a reasonably common problem that junior to intermediate developers tend to face at some point: they either don't know or don't trust the contracts they are participating in and defensively overcheck for nulls. Additionally, when writing their own code, they tend to rely on returning nulls to indicate something thus requiring the caller to check for nulls.
To put this another way, there are two instances where null checking comes up:
Where null is a valid response in terms of the contract; and
Where it isn't a valid response.
(2) is easy. As of Java 1.7 you can use Objects.requireNonNull(foo). (If you are stuck with a previous version then assertions may be a good alternative.)
"Proper" usage of this method would be like below. The method returns the object passed into it and throws a NullPointerException if the object is null. This means that the returned value is always non-null. The method is primarily intended for validating parameters.
public Foo(Bar bar) {
this.bar = Objects.requireNonNull(bar);
}
It can also be used like an assertion though since it throws an exception if the object is null. In both uses, a message can be added which will be shown in the exception. Below is using it like an assertion and providing a message.
Objects.requireNonNull(someobject, "if someobject is null then something is wrong");
someobject.doCalc();
Generally throwing a specific exception like NullPointerException when a value is null but shouldn't be is favorable to throwing a more general exception like AssertionError. This is the approach the Java library takes; favoring NullPointerException over IllegalArgumentException when an argument is not allowed to be null.
(1) is a little harder. If you have no control over the code you're calling then you're stuck. If null is a valid response, you have to check for it.
If it's code that you do control, however (and this is often the case), then it's a different story. Avoid using nulls as a response. With methods that return collections, it's easy: return empty collections (or arrays) instead of nulls pretty much all the time.
With non-collections it might be harder. Consider this as an example: if you have these interfaces:
public interface Action {
void doSomething();
}
public interface Parser {
Action findAction(String userInput);
}
where Parser takes raw user input and finds something to do, perhaps if you're implementing a command line interface for something. Now you might make the contract that it returns null if there's no appropriate action. That leads the null checking you're talking about.
An alternative solution is to never return null and instead use the Null Object pattern:
public class MyParser implements Parser {
private static Action DO_NOTHING = new Action() {
public void doSomething() { /* do nothing */ }
};
public Action findAction(String userInput) {
// ...
if ( /* we can't find any actions */ ) {
return DO_NOTHING;
}
}
}
Compare:
Parser parser = ParserFactory.getParser();
if (parser == null) {
// now what?
// this would be an example of where null isn't (or shouldn't be) a valid response
}
Action action = parser.findAction(someInput);
if (action == null) {
// do nothing
} else {
action.doSomething();
}
to
ParserFactory.getParser().findAction(someInput).doSomething();
which is a much better design because it leads to more concise code.
That said, perhaps it is entirely appropriate for the findAction() method to throw an Exception with a meaningful error message -- especially in this case where you are relying on user input. It would be much better for the findAction method to throw an Exception than for the calling method to blow up with a simple NullPointerException with no explanation.
try {
ParserFactory.getParser().findAction(someInput).doSomething();
} catch(ActionNotFoundException anfe) {
userConsole.err(anfe.getMessage());
}
Or if you think the try/catch mechanism is too ugly, rather than Do Nothing your default action should provide feedback to the user.
public Action findAction(final String userInput) {
/* Code to return requested Action if found */
return new Action() {
public void doSomething() {
userConsole.err("Action not found: " + userInput);
}
}
}

If you use (or planning to use) a Java IDE like JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse or Netbeans or a tool like findbugs then you can use annotations to solve this problem.
Basically, you've got #Nullable and #NotNull.
You can use in method and parameters, like this:
#NotNull public static String helloWorld() {
return "Hello World";
}
or
#Nullable public static String helloWorld() {
return "Hello World";
}
The second example won't compile (in IntelliJ IDEA).
When you use the first helloWorld() function in another piece of code:
public static void main(String[] args)
{
String result = helloWorld();
if(result != null) {
System.out.println(result);
}
}
Now the IntelliJ IDEA compiler will tell you that the check is useless, since the helloWorld() function won't return null, ever.
Using parameter
void someMethod(#NotNull someParameter) { }
if you write something like:
someMethod(null);
This won't compile.
Last example using #Nullable
#Nullable iWantToDestroyEverything() { return null; }
Doing this
iWantToDestroyEverything().something();
And you can be sure that this won't happen. :)
It's a nice way to let the compiler check something more than it usually does and to enforce your contracts to be stronger. Unfortunately, it's not supported by all the compilers.
In IntelliJ IDEA 10.5 and on, they added support for any other #Nullable #NotNull implementations.
See blog post More flexible and configurable #Nullable/#NotNull annotations.

If null-values are not allowed
If your method is called externally, start with something like this:
public void method(Object object) {
if (object == null) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("...");
}
Then, in the rest of that method, you'll know that object is not null.
If it is an internal method (not part of an API), just document that it cannot be null, and that's it.
Example:
public String getFirst3Chars(String text) {
return text.subString(0, 3);
}
However, if your method just passes the value on, and the next method passes it on etc. it could get problematic. In that case you may want to check the argument as above.
If null is allowed
This really depends. If find that I often do something like this:
if (object == null) {
// something
} else {
// something else
}
So I branch, and do two completely different things. There is no ugly code snippet, because I really need to do two different things depending on the data. For example, should I work on the input, or should I calculate a good default value?
It's actually rare for me to use the idiom "if (object != null && ...".
It may be easier to give you examples, if you show examples of where you typically use the idiom.

Wow, I almost hate to add another answer when we have 57 different ways to recommend the NullObject pattern, but I think that some people interested in this question may like to know that there is a proposal on the table for Java 7 to add "null-safe handling"—a streamlined syntax for if-not-equal-null logic.
The example given by Alex Miller looks like this:
public String getPostcode(Person person) {
return person?.getAddress()?.getPostcode();
}
The ?. means only de-reference the left identifier if it is not null, otherwise evaluate the remainder of the expression as null. Some people, like Java Posse member Dick Wall and the voters at Devoxx really love this proposal, but there is opposition too, on the grounds that it will actually encourage more use of null as a sentinel value.
Update: An official proposal for a null-safe operator in Java 7 has been submitted under Project Coin. The syntax is a little different than the example above, but it's the same notion.
Update: The null-safe operator proposal didn't make it into Project Coin. So, you won't be seeing this syntax in Java 7.

If undefined values are not permitted:
You might configure your IDE to warn you about potential null dereferencing. E.g. in Eclipse, see Preferences > Java > Compiler > Errors/Warnings/Null analysis.
If undefined values are permitted:
If you want to define a new API where undefined values make sense, use the Option Pattern (may be familiar from functional languages). It has the following advantages:
It is stated explicitly in the API whether an input or output exists or not.
The compiler forces you to handle the "undefined" case.
Option is a monad, so there is no need for verbose null checking, just use map/foreach/getOrElse or a similar combinator to safely use the value (example).
Java 8 has a built-in Optional class (recommended); for earlier versions, there are library alternatives, for example Guava's Optional or FunctionalJava's Option. But like many functional-style patterns, using Option in Java (even 8) results in quite some boilerplate, which you can reduce using a less verbose JVM language, e.g. Scala or Xtend.
If you have to deal with an API which might return nulls, you can't do much in Java. Xtend and Groovy have the Elvis operator ?: and the null-safe dereference operator ?., but note that this returns null in case of a null reference, so it just "defers" the proper handling of null.

Only for this situation -
Not checking if a variable is null before invoking an equals method (a string compare example below):
if ( foo.equals("bar") ) {
// ...
}
will result in a NullPointerException if foo doesn't exist.
You can avoid that if you compare your Strings like this:
if ( "bar".equals(foo) ) {
// ...
}

With Java 8 comes the new java.util.Optional class that arguably solves some of the problem. One can at least say that it improves the readability of the code, and in the case of public APIs make the API's contract clearer to the client developer.
They work like that:
An optional object for a given type (Fruit) is created as the return type of a method. It can be empty or contain a Fruit object:
public static Optional<Fruit> find(String name, List<Fruit> fruits) {
for (Fruit fruit : fruits) {
if (fruit.getName().equals(name)) {
return Optional.of(fruit);
}
}
return Optional.empty();
}
Now look at this code where we search a list of Fruit (fruits) for a given Fruit instance:
Optional<Fruit> found = find("lemon", fruits);
if (found.isPresent()) {
Fruit fruit = found.get();
String name = fruit.getName();
}
You can use the map() operator to perform a computation on--or extract a value from--an optional object. orElse() lets you provide a fallback for missing values.
String nameOrNull = find("lemon", fruits)
.map(f -> f.getName())
.orElse("empty-name");
Of course, the check for null/empty value is still necessary, but at least the developer is conscious that the value might be empty and the risk of forgetting to check is limited.
In an API built from scratch using Optional whenever a return value might be empty, and returning a plain object only when it cannot be null (convention), the client code might abandon null checks on simple object return values...
Of course Optional could also be used as a method argument, perhaps a better way to indicate optional arguments than 5 or 10 overloading methods in some cases.
Optional offers other convenient methods, such as orElse that allow the use of a default value, and ifPresent that works with lambda expressions.
I invite you to read this article (my main source for writing this answer) in which the NullPointerException (and in general null pointer) problematic as well as the (partial) solution brought by Optional are well explained: Java Optional Objects.

Depending on what kind of objects you are checking you may be able to use some of the classes in the apache commons such as: apache commons lang and apache commons collections
Example:
String foo;
...
if( StringUtils.isBlank( foo ) ) {
///do something
}
or (depending on what you need to check):
String foo;
...
if( StringUtils.isEmpty( foo ) ) {
///do something
}
The StringUtils class is only one of many; there are quite a few good classes in the commons that do null safe manipulation.
Here follows an example of how you can use null vallidation in JAVA when you include apache library(commons-lang-2.4.jar)
public DOCUMENT read(String xml, ValidationEventHandler validationEventHandler) {
Validate.notNull(validationEventHandler,"ValidationHandler not Injected");
return read(new StringReader(xml), true, validationEventHandler);
}
And if you are using Spring, Spring also has the same functionality in its package, see library(spring-2.4.6.jar)
Example on how to use this static classf from spring(org.springframework.util.Assert)
Assert.notNull(validationEventHandler,"ValidationHandler not Injected");

If you consider an object should not be null (or it is a bug) use an assert.
If your method doesn't accept null params say it in the javadoc and use an assert.
You have to check for object != null only if you want to handle the case where the object may be null...
There is a proposal to add new annotations in Java7 to help with null / notnull params:
http://tech.puredanger.com/java7/#jsr308

I'm a fan of "fail fast" code. Ask yourself - are you doing something useful in the case where the parameter is null? If you don't have a clear answer for what your code should do in that case... i.e. - it should never be null in the first place, then ignore it and allow a NullPointerException to be thrown. The calling code will make just as much sense of an NPE as it would an IllegalArgumentException, but it'll be easier for the developer to debug and understand what went wrong if an NPE is thrown rather than your code attempting to execute some other unexpected contingency logic - which ultimately results in the application failing anyway.

Sometimes, you have methods that operate on its parameters that define a symmetric operation:
a.f(b); <-> b.f(a);
If you know b can never be null, you can just swap it. It is most useful for equals:
Instead of foo.equals("bar"); better do "bar".equals(foo);.

Rather than Null Object Pattern -- which has its uses -- you might consider situations where the null object is a bug.
When the exception is thrown, examine the stack trace and work through the bug.

The Google collections framework offers a good and elegant way to achieve the null check.
There is a method in a library class like this:
static <T> T checkNotNull(T e) {
if (e == null) {
throw new NullPointerException();
}
return e;
}
And the usage is (with import static):
...
void foo(int a, Person p) {
if (checkNotNull(p).getAge() > a) {
...
}
else {
...
}
}
...
Or in your example:
checkNotNull(someobject).doCalc();

Null is not a 'problem'. It is an integral part of a complete modeling tool set. Software aims to model the complexity of the world and null bears its burden. Null indicates 'No data' or 'Unknown' in Java and the like. So it is appropriate to use nulls for these purposes. I don't prefer the 'Null object' pattern; I think it rise the 'who will guard
the guardians' problem.
If you ask me what is the name of my girlfriend I'll tell you that I have no girlfriend. In the Java language I'll return null.
An alternative would be to throw meaningful exception to indicate some problem that can't be (or don't want to be) solved right there and delegate it somewhere higher in the stack to retry or report data access error to the user.
For an 'unknown question' give 'unknown answer'. (Be null-safe where this is correct from business point of view) Checking arguments for null once inside a method before usage relieves multiple callers from checking them before a call.
public Photo getPhotoOfThePerson(Person person) {
if (person == null)
return null;
// Grabbing some resources or intensive calculation
// using person object anyhow.
}
Previous leads to normal logic flow to get no photo of a non-existent girlfriend from my photo library.
getPhotoOfThePerson(me.getGirlfriend())
And it fits with new coming Java API (looking forward)
getPhotoByName(me.getGirlfriend()?.getName())
While it is rather 'normal business flow' not to find photo stored into the DB for some person, I used to use pairs like below for some other cases
public static MyEnum parseMyEnum(String value); // throws IllegalArgumentException
public static MyEnum parseMyEnumOrNull(String value);
And don't loathe to type <alt> + <shift> + <j> (generate javadoc in Eclipse) and write three additional words for you public API. This will be more than enough for all but those who don't read documentation.
/**
* #return photo or null
*/
or
/**
* #return photo, never null
*/
This is rather theoretical case and in most cases you should prefer java null safe API (in case it will be released in another 10 years), but NullPointerException is subclass of an Exception. Thus it is a form of Throwable that indicates conditions that a reasonable application might want to catch (javadoc)! To use the first most advantage of exceptions and separate error-handling code from 'regular' code (according to creators of Java) it is appropriate, as for me, to catch NullPointerException.
public Photo getGirlfriendPhoto() {
try {
return appContext.getPhotoDataSource().getPhotoByName(me.getGirlfriend().getName());
} catch (NullPointerException e) {
return null;
}
}
Questions could arise:
Q. What if getPhotoDataSource() returns null?
A. It is up to business logic. If I fail to find a photo album I'll show you no photos. What if appContext is not initialized? This method's business logic puts up with this. If the same logic should be more strict then throwing an exception it is part of the business logic and explicit check for null should be used (case 3). The new Java Null-safe API fits better here to specify selectively what implies and what does not imply to be initialized to be fail-fast in case of programmer errors.
Q. Redundant code could be executed and unnecessary resources could be grabbed.
A. It could take place if getPhotoByName() would try to open a database connection, create PreparedStatement and use the person name as an SQL parameter at last. The approach for an unknown question gives an unknown answer (case 1) works here. Before grabbing resources the method should check parameters and return 'unknown' result if needed.
Q. This approach has a performance penalty due to the try closure opening.
A. Software should be easy to understand and modify firstly. Only after this, one could think about performance, and only if needed! and where needed! (source), and many others).
PS. This approach will be as reasonable to use as the separate error-handling code from "regular" code principle is reasonable to use in some place. Consider the next example:
public SomeValue calculateSomeValueUsingSophisticatedLogic(Predicate predicate) {
try {
Result1 result1 = performSomeCalculation(predicate);
Result2 result2 = performSomeOtherCalculation(result1.getSomeProperty());
Result3 result3 = performThirdCalculation(result2.getSomeProperty());
Result4 result4 = performLastCalculation(result3.getSomeProperty());
return result4.getSomeProperty();
} catch (NullPointerException e) {
return null;
}
}
public SomeValue calculateSomeValueUsingSophisticatedLogic(Predicate predicate) {
SomeValue result = null;
if (predicate != null) {
Result1 result1 = performSomeCalculation(predicate);
if (result1 != null && result1.getSomeProperty() != null) {
Result2 result2 = performSomeOtherCalculation(result1.getSomeProperty());
if (result2 != null && result2.getSomeProperty() != null) {
Result3 result3 = performThirdCalculation(result2.getSomeProperty());
if (result3 != null && result3.getSomeProperty() != null) {
Result4 result4 = performLastCalculation(result3.getSomeProperty());
if (result4 != null) {
result = result4.getSomeProperty();
}
}
}
}
}
return result;
}
PPS. For those fast to downvote (and not so fast to read documentation) I would like to say that I've never caught a null-pointer exception (NPE) in my life. But this possibility was intentionally designed by the Java creators because NPE is a subclass of Exception. We have a precedent in Java history when ThreadDeath is an Error not because it is actually an application error, but solely because it was not intended to be caught! How much NPE fits to be an Error than ThreadDeath! But it is not.
Check for 'No data' only if business logic implies it.
public void updatePersonPhoneNumber(Long personId, String phoneNumber) {
if (personId == null)
return;
DataSource dataSource = appContext.getStuffDataSource();
Person person = dataSource.getPersonById(personId);
if (person != null) {
person.setPhoneNumber(phoneNumber);
dataSource.updatePerson(person);
} else {
Person = new Person(personId);
person.setPhoneNumber(phoneNumber);
dataSource.insertPerson(person);
}
}
and
public void updatePersonPhoneNumber(Long personId, String phoneNumber) {
if (personId == null)
return;
DataSource dataSource = appContext.getStuffDataSource();
Person person = dataSource.getPersonById(personId);
if (person == null)
throw new SomeReasonableUserException("What are you thinking about ???");
person.setPhoneNumber(phoneNumber);
dataSource.updatePerson(person);
}
If appContext or dataSource is not initialized unhandled runtime NullPointerException will kill current thread and will be processed by Thread.defaultUncaughtExceptionHandler (for you to define and use your favorite logger or other notification mechanizm). If not set, ThreadGroup#uncaughtException will print stacktrace to system err. One should monitor application error log and open Jira issue for each unhandled exception which in fact is application error. Programmer should fix bug somewhere in initialization stuff.

Java 7 has a new java.util.Objects utility class on which there is a requireNonNull() method. All this does is throw a NullPointerException if its argument is null, but it cleans up the code a bit. Example:
Objects.requireNonNull(someObject);
someObject.doCalc();
The method is most useful for checking just before an assignment in a constructor, where each use of it can save three lines of code:
Parent(Child child) {
if (child == null) {
throw new NullPointerException("child");
}
this.child = child;
}
becomes
Parent(Child child) {
this.child = Objects.requireNonNull(child, "child");
}

Ultimately, the only way to completely solve this problem is by using a different programming language:
In Objective-C, you can do the equivalent of invoking a method on nil, and absolutely nothing will happen. This makes most null checks unnecessary, but it can make errors much harder to diagnose.
In Nice, a Java-derived language, there are two versions of all types: a potentially-null version and a not-null version. You can only invoke methods on not-null types. Potentially-null types can be converted to not-null types through explicit checking for null. This makes it much easier to know where null checks are necessary and where they aren't.

Common "problem" in Java indeed.
First, my thoughts on this:
I consider that it is bad to "eat" something when NULL was passed where NULL isn't a valid value. If you're not exiting the method with some sort of error then it means nothing went wrong in your method which is not true. Then you probably return null in this case, and in the receiving method you again check for null, and it never ends, and you end up with "if != null", etc..
So, IMHO, null must be a critical error which prevents further execution (that is, where null is not a valid value).
The way I solve this problem is this:
First, I follow this convention:
All public methods / API always check its arguments for null
All private methods do not check for null since they are controlled methods (just let die with nullpointer exception in case it wasn't handled above)
The only other methods which do not check for null are utility methods. They are public, but if you call them for some reason, you know what parameters you pass. This is like trying to boil water in the kettle without providing water...
And finally, in the code, the first line of the public method goes like this:
ValidationUtils.getNullValidator().addParam(plans, "plans").addParam(persons, "persons").validate();
Note that addParam() returns self, so that you can add more parameters to check.
Method validate() will throw checked ValidationException if any of the parameters is null (checked or unchecked is more a design/taste issue, but my ValidationException is checked).
void validate() throws ValidationException;
The message will contain the following text if, for example, "plans" is null:
"Illegal argument value null is encountered for parameter [plans]"
As you can see, the second value in the addParam() method (string) is needed for the user message, because you cannot easily detect passed-in variable name, even with reflection (not subject of this post anyway...).
And yes, we know that beyond this line we will no longer encounter a null value so we just safely invoke methods on those objects.
This way, the code is clean, easy maintainable and readable.

Asking that question points out that you may be interested in error handling strategies. How and where to handle errors is a pervasive architectural question. There are several ways to do this.
My favorite: allow the Exceptions to ripple through - catch them at the 'main loop' or in some other function with the appropriate responsibilities. Checking for error conditions and handling them appropriately can be seen as a specialized responsibility.
Sure do have a look at Aspect Oriented Programming, too - they have neat ways to insert if( o == null ) handleNull() into your bytecode.

In addition to using assert you can use the following:
if (someobject == null) {
// Handle null here then move on.
}
This is slightly better than:
if (someobject != null) {
.....
.....
.....
}

Just don't ever use null. Don't allow it.
In my classes, most fields and local variables have non-null default values, and I add contract statements (always-on asserts) everywhere in the code to make sure this is being enforced (since it's more succinct, and more expressive than letting it come up as an NPE and then having to resolve the line number, etc.).
Once I adopted this practice, I noticed that the problems seemed to fix themselves. You'd catch things much earlier in the development process just by accident and realize you had a weak spot.. and more importantly.. it helps encapsulate different modules' concerns, different modules can 'trust' each other, and no more littering the code with if = null else constructs!
This is defensive programming and results in much cleaner code in the long run. Always sanitize the data, e.g. here by enforcing rigid standards, and the problems go away.
class C {
private final MyType mustBeSet;
public C(MyType mything) {
mustBeSet=Contract.notNull(mything);
}
private String name = "<unknown>";
public void setName(String s) {
name = Contract.notNull(s);
}
}
class Contract {
public static <T> T notNull(T t) { if (t == null) { throw new ContractException("argument must be non-null"); return t; }
}
The contracts are like mini-unit tests which are always running, even in production, and when things fail, you know why, rather than a random NPE you have to somehow figure out.

Guava, a very useful core library by Google, has a nice and useful API to avoid nulls. I find UsingAndAvoidingNullExplained very helpful.
As explained in the wiki:
Optional<T> is a way of replacing a nullable T reference with a
non-null value. An Optional may either contain a non-null T reference
(in which case we say the reference is "present"), or it may contain
nothing (in which case we say the reference is "absent"). It is never
said to "contain null."
Usage:
Optional<Integer> possible = Optional.of(5);
possible.isPresent(); // returns true
possible.get(); // returns 5

This is a very common problem for every Java developer. So there is official support in Java 8 to address these issues without cluttered code.
Java 8 has introduced java.util.Optional<T>. It is a container that may or may not hold a non-null value. Java 8 has given a safer way to handle an object whose value may be null in some of the cases. It is inspired from the ideas of Haskell and Scala.
In a nutshell, the Optional class includes methods to explicitly deal with the cases where a value is present or absent. However, the advantage compared to null references is that the Optional<T> class forces you to think about the case when the value is not present. As a consequence, you can prevent unintended null pointer exceptions.
In above example we have a home service factory that returns a handle to multiple appliances available in the home. But these services may or may not be available/functional; it means it may result in a NullPointerException. Instead of adding a null if condition before using any service, let's wrap it in to Optional<Service>.
WRAPPING TO OPTION<T>
Let's consider a method to get a reference of a service from a factory. Instead of returning the service reference, wrap it with Optional. It lets the API user know that the returned service may or may not available/functional, use defensively
public Optional<Service> getRefrigertorControl() {
Service s = new RefrigeratorService();
//...
return Optional.ofNullable(s);
}
As you see Optional.ofNullable() provides an easy way to get the reference wrapped. There are another ways to get the reference of Optional, either Optional.empty() & Optional.of(). One for returning an empty object instead of retuning null and the other to wrap a non-nullable object, respectively.
SO HOW EXACTLY IT HELPS TO AVOID A NULL CHECK?
Once you have wrapped a reference object, Optional provides many useful methods to invoke methods on a wrapped reference without NPE.
Optional ref = homeServices.getRefrigertorControl();
ref.ifPresent(HomeServices::switchItOn);
Optional.ifPresent invokes the given Consumer with a reference if it is a non-null value. Otherwise, it does nothing.
#FunctionalInterface
public interface Consumer<T>
Represents an operation that accepts a single input argument and returns no result. Unlike most other functional interfaces, Consumer is expected to operate via side-effects.
It is so clean and easy to understand. In the above code example, HomeService.switchOn(Service) gets invoked if the Optional holding reference is non-null.
We use the ternary operator very often for checking null condition and return an alternative value or default value. Optional provides another way to handle the same condition without checking null. Optional.orElse(defaultObj) returns defaultObj if the Optional has a null value. Let's use this in our sample code:
public static Optional<HomeServices> get() {
service = Optional.of(service.orElse(new HomeServices()));
return service;
}
Now HomeServices.get() does same thing, but in a better way. It checks whether the service is already initialized of not. If it is then return the same or create a new New service. Optional<T>.orElse(T) helps to return a default value.
Finally, here is our NPE as well as null check-free code:
import java.util.Optional;
public class HomeServices {
private static final int NOW = 0;
private static Optional<HomeServices> service;
public static Optional<HomeServices> get() {
service = Optional.of(service.orElse(new HomeServices()));
return service;
}
public Optional<Service> getRefrigertorControl() {
Service s = new RefrigeratorService();
//...
return Optional.ofNullable(s);
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
/* Get Home Services handle */
Optional<HomeServices> homeServices = HomeServices.get();
if(homeServices != null) {
Optional<Service> refrigertorControl = homeServices.get().getRefrigertorControl();
refrigertorControl.ifPresent(HomeServices::switchItOn);
}
}
public static void switchItOn(Service s){
//...
}
}
The complete post is NPE as well as Null check-free code … Really?.

I like articles from Nat Pryce. Here are the links:
Avoiding Nulls with Polymorphic Dispatch
Avoiding Nulls with "Tell, Don't Ask" Style
In the articles there is also a link to a Git repository for a Java Maybe Type which I find interesting, but I don't think it alone could decrease the
checking code bloat. After doing some research on the Internet, I think != null code bloat could be decreased mainly by careful design.

I've tried the NullObjectPattern but for me is not always the best way to go. There are sometimes when a "no action" is not appropiate.
NullPointerException is a Runtime exception that means it's developers fault and with enough experience it tells you exactly where is the error.
Now to the answer:
Try to make all your attributes and its accessors as private as possible or avoid to expose them to the clients at all. You can have the argument values in the constructor of course, but by reducing the scope you don't let the client class pass an invalid value. If you need to modify the values, you can always create a new object. You check the values in the constructor only once and in the rest of the methods you can be almost sure that the values are not null.
Of course, experience is the better way to understand and apply this suggestion.
Byte!

Probably the best alternative for Java 8 or newer is to use the Optional class.
Optional stringToUse = Optional.of("optional is there");
stringToUse.ifPresent(System.out::println);
This is especially handy for long chains of possible null values. Example:
Optional<Integer> i = Optional.ofNullable(wsObject.getFoo())
.map(f -> f.getBar())
.map(b -> b.getBaz())
.map(b -> b.getInt());
Example on how to throw exception on null:
Optional optionalCarNull = Optional.ofNullable(someNull);
optionalCarNull.orElseThrow(IllegalStateException::new);
Java 7 introduced the Objects.requireNonNull method which can be handy when something should be checked for non-nullness. Example:
String lowerVal = Objects.requireNonNull(someVar, "input cannot be null or empty").toLowerCase();

May I answer it more generally!
We usually face this issue when the methods get the parameters in the way we not expected (bad method call is programmer's fault). For example: you expect to get an object, instead you get a null. You expect to get an String with at least one character, instead you get an empty String ...
So there is no difference between:
if(object == null){
//you called my method badly!
}
or
if(str.length() == 0){
//you called my method badly again!
}
They both want to make sure that we received valid parameters, before we do any other functions.
As mentioned in some other answers, to avoid above problems you can follow the Design by contract pattern. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_contract.
To implement this pattern in java, you can use core java annotations like javax.annotation.NotNull or use more sophisticated libraries like Hibernate Validator.
Just a sample:
getCustomerAccounts(#NotEmpty String customerId,#Size(min = 1) String accountType)
Now you can safely develop the core function of your method without needing to check input parameters, they guard your methods from unexpected parameters.
You can go a step further and make sure that only valid pojos could be created in your application. (sample from hibernate validator site)
public class Car {
#NotNull
private String manufacturer;
#NotNull
#Size(min = 2, max = 14)
private String licensePlate;
#Min(2)
private int seatCount;
// ...
}

I highly disregard answers that suggest using the null objects in every situation. This pattern may break the contract and bury problems deeper and deeper instead of solving them, not mentioning that used inappropriately will create another pile of boilerplate code that will require future maintenance.
In reality if something returned from a method can be null and the calling code has to make decision upon that, there should an earlier call that ensures the state.
Also keep in mind, that null object pattern will be memory hungry if used without care. For this - the instance of a NullObject should be shared between owners, and not be an unigue instance for each of these.
Also I would not recommend using this pattern where the type is meant to be a primitive type representation - like mathematical entities, that are not scalars: vectors, matrices, complex numbers and POD(Plain Old Data) objects, which are meant to hold state in form of Java built-in types. In the latter case you would end up calling getter methods with arbitrary results. For example what should a NullPerson.getName() method return?
It's worth considering such cases in order to avoid absurd results.

Never initialise variables to null.
If (1) is not possible, initialise all collections and arrays to empty collections/arrays.
Doing this in your own code and you can avoid != null checks.
Most of the time null checks seem to guard loops over collections or arrays, so just initialise them empty, you won't need any null checks.
// Bad
ArrayList<String> lemmings;
String[] names;
void checkLemmings() {
if (lemmings != null) for(lemming: lemmings) {
// do something
}
}
// Good
ArrayList<String> lemmings = new ArrayList<String>();
String[] names = {};
void checkLemmings() {
for(lemming: lemmings) {
// do something
}
}
There is a tiny overhead in this, but it's worth it for cleaner code and less NullPointerExceptions.

This is the most common error occurred for most of the developers.
We have number of ways to handle this.
Approach 1:
org.apache.commons.lang.Validate //using apache framework
notNull(Object object, String message)
Approach 2:
if(someObject!=null){ // simply checking against null
}
Approach 3:
#isNull #Nullable // using annotation based validation
Approach 4:
// by writing static method and calling it across whereever we needed to check the validation
static <T> T isNull(someObject e){
if(e == null){
throw new NullPointerException();
}
return e;
}

Java 8 has introduced a new class Optional in java.util package.
Advantages of Java 8 Optional:
1.) Null checks are not required.
2.) No more NullPointerException at run-time.
3.) We can develop clean and neat APIs.
Optional - A container object which may or may not contain a non-null value. If a value is present, isPresent() will return true and get() will return the value.
For more details find here oracle docs :-
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/Optional.html