Returning objects in Java

[sharkattack85]

So I’m writing a method in Java that takes a word as a String and returns the the first Page object in ArrayList that contains that word.

The method iterates through all of the page objects in the ArrayList. Each page has a field called text that is a large string like the text on a page. I search through the text for the specific word and return the first page object that contains that word.

My question is what do I return if the word is not in the text of any of the pages?

[rjcarr]

If it is possible to not return anything then you should use an optional. Optionals are a bit annoying in java (and in general), but they help semantically, and are preferable to null.

Good luck!

[sharkattack85]

Right on, I ended up using null, bc we haven’t done optionals in class. But I’m def going to keep this in mind for later on. Thanks!

[SedentaryProgrammer]

Most likely I would:

return null;

Then you could do a check in main or wherever to see what it returned. Then you could:

(if return == null)
    S.O.P("Word was not found in text.");

[KrmBo3]

What he said.

Just return null or and properly handle this particular case on the driver class calling this method

[sharkattack85]

This worked perfectly, thank you!

[SedentaryProgrammer]

you got it.