Std Lib

If you have worked with Java at all in the past, it is very likely that you have come across a NullPointerException at some time (other languages will throw similarly named errors in such a case). Usually this happens because some method returns null when you were not expecting it and thus not dealing with that possibility in your client code. A value of null is often abused to represent an absent optional value.

Scala tries to solve the problem by getting rid of null values altogether and providing its own type for representing optional values, i.e. values that may be present or not: the Option[A] trait.

Option[A] is a container for an optional value of type A. If the value of type A is present, the Option[A] is an instance of Some[A], containing the present value of type A. If the value is absent, the Option[A] is the object None.

val someValue: Option[String] = Some("I am wrapped in something")
someValue should be(res0)

val emptyValue: Option[String] = None
emptyValue should be(res1)

Let's write a function that may or not give us a string, thus returning Option[String]:

def maybeItWillReturnSomething(flag: Boolean): Option[String] = {
  if (flag) Some("Found value") else None
}

Using getOrElse, we can extract the value if it exists, or return a provided default value. If we have a Some(x) we return x, and for None we return the default value.

val value1 = maybeItWillReturnSomething(true)
val value2 = maybeItWillReturnSomething(false)

value1 getOrElse "No value" should be(res0)
value2 getOrElse "No value" should be(res1)
value2 getOrElse {
  "default function"
} should be(res2)

Checking whether option has value:

val value1 = maybeItWillReturnSomething(true)
val value2 = maybeItWillReturnSomething(false)

value1.isEmpty should be(res0)
value2.isEmpty should be(res1)

Option can also be used with pattern matching:

val someValue: Option[Double] = Some(20.0)
val value = someValue match {
  case Some(v) => v
  case None => 0.0
}
value should be(res0)
val noValue: Option[Double] = None
val value1 = noValue match {
  case Some(v) => v
  case None => 0.0
}
value1 should be(res1)

An alternative for pattern matching is performing collection style operations. This is possible because an option could be looked at as a collection with either one or zero elements.

One of these operations is map. This operation allows us to map the inner value to a different type while preserving the option:

val number: Option[Int] = Some(3)
val noNumber: Option[Int] = None
val result1 = number.map(_ * 1.5)
val result2 = noNumber.map(_ * 1.5)

result1 should be(res0)
result2 should be(res1)

Another operation is fold. This operation will extract the value from the option, or provide a default if the value is None

val number: Option[Int] = Some(3)
val noNumber: Option[Int] = None
val result1 = number.fold(1)(_ * 3)
val result2 = noNumber.fold(1)(_ * 3)

result1 should be(res0)
result2 should be(res1)