Question

I am doing a big Java/Spring rewrite into a Java/Scala/Spring project. So I just want to check if this is the right sort of thing to do.

I am getting the Spring user details from the SecuritContext. The following code is called for those that are and are not logged in. I want to check that the check for null is the correct thing to do. Please advise because checking for nulls like this doesn’t feel right.

private def getUserDetails : Option[UserDetails] = {
  if(userDetails == null && securityContextFacade.getSecurityContext.getAuthentication != null){
    val details = securityContextFacade.getSecurityContext.getAuthentication.getPrincipal
    userDetails = details.asInstanceOf[UserDetails]
  }
  if(userDetails != null){
    Option(userDetails)
  }
  else{
    None
  }
}

Answer 1

There is no necessary for doing latter check, because Option(…) already do it inside and evaluates to None in case of null. So

if(userDetails != null){
    Option(userDetails)
  }
else{
    None
}

can be written as

Option(userDetails)