Laravel 5: Provide Default Values for Object Properties With optional

The optional function returns a new instance of "Illuminate\Support\Optional" with the provided value. This helper class allows you to easily retrieve a default, or null value on method return values or object properties that might not exist. This is useful in situations where you are displaying data, or are simply returning trivial results that might not exist at runtime.

#Signature

The signature of the optional function is:

1function optional(
2    $value
3);

#Example Use

The following example would throw an ErrorException with the message "Trying to get property of non-object":

1// Imagine that the `$testObject` was returned from
2// a method call or API request.
3$testObject = null;
4 
5// Attempt to access a property that does not exist.
6$testValue  = $testObject->someProperty;

However, if we wrapped the property access in a call to the optional function, we would instead receive a null value:

1$testObject = null;
2 
3$testValue = optional($testObject)->someProperty;

This behavior of the optional helper function makes it useful for creating presenter classes or validation logic around Eloquent method return results.

The Optional class also implements the "Illuminate\Support\Traits\Macroable" trait which means that we can dynamically add functionality to the Optional instance run-time:

1$testObject = optional(null);
2 
3// Add a method to the Optional instance.
4$testObject->macro('testMacro', function () {
5   return 'Hello, Universe';
6});
7 
8$value = $testObject->testMacro();

After the above code has executed, the $value variable would contain Hello, Universe.

∎