getOrNull

[Markus Padourek]

Hey, it would be nice if I could do result.getOrNull or result.getOrElse(null) or similar as sometimes nulls are used to show there is an error instead of an exception being thrown.

[Kittinun Vantasin]

I think we already have getOrElse but not getOrNull, however I am not so sure about result.getOrElse(null) though.

Do you think just getOrNull would be enough for your usecase?

[Markus Padourek]

@kittinunf I would think probably getOrNull, because I suppose otherwise it could be confusing with the return types, as in one case we would want to return a nullable type and in the other not.

Just running into another case, where I want to use getOrElse but I want to use some information of the error-class to construct the class in the else part, so it would be nice to have something like:

inline infix fun <V: Any, E: Exception> Result<V, E>.getOrElse(transform: (E) -> V): V {
    return when (this) {
        is Result.Success -> value
        is Result.Failure -> transform(error)
    }
}

In my opinion this could even replace the existing getOrElse as this would cover all cases, but it would of course be a breaking change, which might not be so ideal. Either way though, what do you think about the idea?

And getOrNull would be something like:

fun <V: Any, E: Exception> Result<V, E>.getOrNull(): V? {
    return when (this) {
        is Result.Success -> value
        is Result.Failure -> null
    }
}

I am also happy to send out a PR for this if we can agree on the naming, etc.

[Kittinun Vantasin]

Looks awesome! Please send PR! I will take a look at it 💪😉

Thanks for discussion and helpful suggestion.

[Markus Padourek]

@kittinunf any chance you can look at the pull requests I opened, would love to be able to use them in our code-base from an officially released version 😃

[Kittinun Vantasin]

Sure sure! I have commented on it! Sorry for being late 🙇

[Kittinun Vantasin]

Do you think we should quickly bump new version for #62 so you can use right away in your project?

[Kittinun Vantasin]

Shall we close this? 😉

[Markus Padourek]

Yep can be closed. Thanks for working together in this :)