Assign value of Optional to a variable if present

You could use #orElse or orElseThrow to improve the readbility of your code.

Optional<MyObject> object = someMethod();
String myValue = object.orElse(new MyObject()).getValue();

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Optional<MyObject> object = someMethod();
String myValue = object.orElseThrow(RuntimeException::new).getValue();

Quite late but I did following:

String myValue = object.map(x->x.getValue()).orElse("");
                           //or null. Whatever you want to return.