Scala: for comprehensions with Options

I’ve generally avoided using for expressions in Scala because the keyword reminds me of for loops in Java/C# and I want to learn to program in a less imperative way.

After working with my colleague Mushtaq I realised that in some cases using for comprehensions can lead to much more readable code.

An interesting use case where this is the case is when we want to create an object from a bunch of parameters that may or may not be set. i.e. a bunch of options.

For example we might take some input from the user where they have to enter their name but could choose to leave the field blank:

val maybeFirstName : Option[String] = Some("Mark")
val maybeSurname : Option[String] = None

We only want to create a Person if they have provided both names.

The for comprehension works quite well in allowing us to do this:

case class Person(firstName:String, surname:String)

scala> for { firstName <- maybeFirstName; surname <- maybeSurname } yield Person(firstName, surname)
res27: Option[Person] = None

If we set the surname to have a value:

val maybeSurname : Option[String] = Some("Needham")

Running the same for comprehension will yield a Person

scala> for { firstName <- maybeFirstName; surname <- maybeSurname } yield Person(firstName, surname)
res29: Option[Person] = Some(Person(Mark,Needham))

From what I understand when we have multiple values assigned using ‘<-' inside a for comprehension, each value will have flatMap called on it except for the last one which will have map called instead.

The equivalent code if we didn’t use a for comprehension would therefore look like this:

scala> maybeFirstName.flatMap { firstName => maybeSurname.map { surname => Person(firstName, surname) } } 
res43: Option[Person] = Some(Person(Mark,Needham))

For me the for comprehension expresses intent much better and it seems to excel even more as we add more values to the comprehension.