Java: Clean way of avoiding NullPointerException in equals checks

Question

I have an address object that I want to create an equals method for. I could have made this quite simple by doing something like the following (shortened a bit):

Answer 1

You can use a helper method like

public static boolean isEqual(Object o1, Object o2) {
    return o1 == o2 || (o1 != null && o1.equals(o2));
}