Question

Is there a way to avoid having to wrap a potentially null result inside another option when mapping from an option.

option.flatMap(arg => Option(arg.somePotentiallyNullValue))

Eg something like

option.optionMap(arg => arg.somePotentiallyNullValue )

I just have a lot of Java code in our codebase that means forever wrapping the results of maps in further Option calls.

Answer 1

What about implicit conversion from nullable type to Option? Declare this somewhere in scope:

implicit def toOption[T](x: T) : Option[T] = Option(x)

Later the compiler will figure it out:

option.flatMap(_.somePotentiallyNullValue)

Since flatMap expects Option[T] as a result value, compiler uses toOption implicit conversion like this:

option.flatMap(arg => toOption(arg.somePotentiallyNullValue))