Cleaner way to do a null check in C#? [duplicate]

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• C# elegant way to check if a property's property is null 21 answers

Suppose, I have this interface,

interface IContact
{
    IAddress address { get; set; }
}

interface IAddress
{
    string city { get; set; }
}

class Person : IPerson
{
    public IContact contact { get; set; }
}

class test
{
    private test()
    {
        var person = new Person();
        if (person.contact.address.city != null)
        {
            //this will never work if contact is itself null?
        }
    }
}

Person.Contact.Address.City != null (This works to check if City is null or not.)

However, this check fails if Address or Contact or Person itself is null.

Currently, one solution I could think of was this:

if (Person != null && Person.Contact!=null && Person.Contact.Address!= null && Person.Contact.Address.City != null)

{ 
    // Do some stuff here..
}

Is there a cleaner way of doing this?

I really don't like the null check being done as (something == null). Instead, is there another nice way to do something like the something.IsNull() method?

Answer 1

Depending on what the purpose of using the "city" variable is, a cleaner way could be to separate the null checks into different classes. That way you also wouldn't be violating the Law of Demeter. So instead of:

if (person != null && person.contact != null && person.contact.address != null && person.contact.address.city != null)
{ 
    // do some stuff here..
}

You'd have:

class test
{
    private test()
    {
        var person = new Person();
        if (person != null)
        {
            person.doSomething();
        }
    }
}

...

/* Person class */
doSomething() 
{
    if (contact != null)
    {
        contact.doSomething();
    }
}

...

/* Contact class */
doSomething()
{
    if (address != null) 
    {
        address.doSomething();
    }
}

...

/* Address class */
doSomething()
{
    if (city != null)
    {
        // do something with city
    }
}

Again, it depends on the purpose of the program.