Can I use Scala options to avoid the following NoSuchElementException?

Question

I have the following HashMap

val lastAsk = new HashMap[String, Quote]

Quote objects have a price() method

The following

lastAsk(lastSecurity).price

throws NoSuchElementException if lastSecurity is not a key. To fix I could use contains to check then return -1 if the key is not found. However this feels like a hack can I use Option here to engineer a more elegant solution?

Answer 1

Map has method get that returns Option, so you can write something like this:

lastAsk get lastSecurity map (_ price) getOrElse 0

You can either use option further in your code or provide some default with the help of option's method getOrElse (in my example it's 0).