How to Filter Null Values from a Stream in Java

Suppose we are streaming through a list of objects in Java.

List<String> lst = ...;

How can we filter for only non-null objects?

1. Using java.util.Objects

java.util.Objects has a method Objects::nonNull that will do just this.

lst.stream().filter(Objects::nonNull);

This is just a shorthand for the following:

lst.stream().filter(obj -> Objects.nonNull(obj));

2. Using a comparison operator

We can also simply check that an object does not equal null.

lst.stream().filter(obj -> obj != null);