Safe Navigation Operator

Basic usage

Groovy’s safe navigation operator allows to avoid NullPointerExceptions when accessing to methods or attributes on variables that may assume null values. It is equivalent to nullable_var == null ? null : nullable_var.myMethod()

def lst = ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']

def f_value = lst.find { it.startsWith('f') }    // 'foo' found
f_value?.length()    // returns 3

def null_value = lst.find { it.startsWith('z') }    // no element found. Null returned

// equivalent to  null_value==null ? null : null_value.length()
null_value?.length()    // no NullPointerException thrown

// no safe operator used
null_value.length()    // NullPointerException thrown

Concatenation of safe navigation operators

class User {
  String name
  int age
}

def users = [
  new User(name: "Bob", age: 20),
  new User(name: "Tom", age: 50),
  new User(name: "Bill", age: 45)
]

def null_value = users.find { it.age > 100 }    // no over-100 found. Null 

null_value?.name?.length()    // no NPE thrown
//  null ?. name  ?. length()
// (null ?. name) ?. length()
// (    null    ) ?. length()
// null

null_value?.name.length()    // NPE thrown
//  null ?. name  . length()
// (null ?. name) . length()
// (    null    ) . length()  ===> NullPointerException

the safe navigation on null_value?.name will return a null value. Thus length() will have to perform a check on null value to avoid a NullPointerException.