How to best create a Java 8 stream from a nullable object?

Question

What is the best/idiomatic way of doing a null check before getting a stream?

I have method that is receiving a List that might be null. So I can\'t jus

Answer 1

The best thing I can think of would be to use an Optional with the orElseGet method.

return Optional.ofNullable(userList)
                .orElseGet(Collections::emptyList)
                .stream()
                .map(user -> user.getName())
                .collect(toList());

Updated with @Misha's suggest to use Collections::emptyList over ArrayList::new