Is this example of use Optionals in java 8 correct? How would you rewrite it?

Pavel :

I've started to use Java's 8 Optionals. and I would like to share this method, it is "code smells" example and I would like to rewrite it using java 8 and optionlas and functional (declarative) style, so I am interested in seeing your opinion on it. Let's consider this method:

  public boolean isTokenValid(String userAgent, Optional<String> apiKey) {
    LOGGER.info(String.format("userAgent : %s, Key ?: %s", userAgent, apiKey.isPresent()));
    if ("ALFA".equalsIgnoreCase(userAgent)){
        return (apiKey != null && apiKey.isPresent()
                && ispropertyExists(ALFA_TYPE, apiKey.get()));
    }
    else {
        return (apiKey != null && apiKey.isPresent()
                && ispropertyExists(BETA_TYPE, apiKey.get()));
    }
}

Where "ispropertyExists" returns boolean type, and "ALFA_TYPE" and "OMEGA_TYPE" are enums constants. So below is the way I rewrote this method in intention to improve the readability and practice functional thinking style. I've added comments, to explain my thoughts and reasons I did so and so, I appreciate your opinions and examples of your ways if you think you able to improve it.

    /**
 * We should not pass Optionals as a parameters to the methods. We
 * should use Optionals only for return value when we are not sure if value will
 * be presented at the end of the calculations or not.
 */
public boolean isTokenValid(String userAgent, String apiKey) {
    LOGGER.info(String.format("userAgent : %s, Key ?: %s", userAgent, apiKey));

    /**
     * If apiKey is null then it is incorrect. And execution will stop after
     * Optional.ofNullable(apiKey), since monad will be having null value. If apiKey
     * is not null then we still want to filter out empty strings. If after filter
     * there will be no value, then execution will stop.
     * If we have some value for apiKey then it is ok and we map the monad to the
     * userAgent value to proceed the chain of calls on monad.
     */
    Optional<String> userAgentOptional = Optional.ofNullable(apiKey).filter(StringUtils::isNotBlank)
            .map(ak -> userAgent);

    /**
     * We map "userAgent" value to boolean (if it is a alfa or not). Then
     * we map that boolean to boolean value which represents security check in db
     * itself.
     */
    Optional<Boolean> isValid = userAgentOptional.map(ua -> "ALFA".equalsIgnoreCase(ua))
            .map(isAlfa -> isAlfa ? ispropertyExists(ALFA_TYPE, apiKey)
                    : ispropertyExists(BETA_TYPE, apiKey));

    /**
     * And all in all we get value from our optional boolean. If "somehow" it is
     * ended up to be empty, then we retrun "false", if it is not empty, then the
     * value will itself be returned.
     */
    return isValid.orElse(false);
}

Thank you.

ETO :

I would combine all the operations in one chained statement and return the result avoiding unnecessary Optional variables.

 return Optional.ofNullable(apiKey)
                .filter(StringUtils::isNotBlank)
                .map(ak -> userAgent)
                .map("ALFA"::equalsIgnoreCase)
                .map(isAlfa -> isAlfa ? ALFA_TYPE : BETA_TYPE)
                .map(type -> ispropertyExists(type, apiKey))
                .orElse(false);