adam bien's blog

Java 9 comes with an additional Optional.or method with the following functionality:

"If a value is present, returns an Optional describing the value, otherwise returns an Optional produced by the supplying function."

The method Optional::or is useful for the implementation of fallback logic. The example below return an Integer with the value 42:

import java.util.Optional;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertNotNull;
import org.junit.Test;

public class OptionalTest {

    @Test
    public void or() {
        int message = this.answer().
                map(Integer::parseInt).
                or(this::defaultAnswer).
                get();
        assertThat(message, is(42));
    }

    public Optional<String> answer() {
        return Optional.ofNullable(null);
    }

    public Optional<Integer> defaultAnswer() {
        return Optional.of(42);
    }
}    

The method answer returns null, therefore the method map is not executed. The (fallback) or branch is executed instead and returns directly the 42 as integer.