Call Me Maybe
Let’s imagine your typical code.
You might say, “So what, Sandae? Here to say we’re doing it wrong again?”.
I’m afraid yes.
findOne is dishonest
We’re expecting a $user but then we got a null value. findOne should return one, right? Not null.
Should we rename the method to findOneOrNull so that consumers of the method will not forget to check for null return?
That’s a bit ugly so we need a better way.
Fixing dishonesty with Maybe
Let’s write our Maybe class
Usage:
Our code now is honest 🎉. Our editor would caught it and give us a nice hint that the function might or might not return a user.
But!
I don’t like the nested if/else and it is still verbose to me. Let’s fix it with a mouthful word so that I will sound smart.
Enter, Railway-Oriented Programming. We’re going to add some extensions to our Maybe class.
Usage:
Thank you for reading. Hope this will enhance your code base. Happy coding!