Cleaner way to check if null

Question

I have a class that holds a couple of byte arrays, some could be empty some not. And I want to return the first non null array (if there is one) or null if there isn't. But the code just seems so redundant and ugly.

public byte[] getFirstPhoto() {
    if (photo1 != null) {
        return photo1;
    }       
    if (photo2 != null) {
        return photo2;
    }
    if (photo3 != null) {
        return photo3;
    }
    if(videoThumbnail != null){
        return videoThumbnail;
    }
    return null;
}

Is there anyway to clean that up, or not really?

@wero and allows another case to be inserted after without changing the existing code. — Andy Turner, Mar 16 '16 at 17:34

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 16 '16 at 17:06

Yes. Write a method something like this:

public byte[] firstNonNull(byte[]... arrays) {
    for (byte[] array : arrays) {
        if (array != null)
            return array;
    }
    return null;
}

Then call this function passing in your four arrays in the proper order.

Cleaner way to check if null

1 Answers1