The problem I’m facing is, when returning Optional i get null value.As I tought the purpose of Optional type is to avoid null values I’m a bit confused now.
This is my code:
PlayerController.java

    @GetMapping("/{id}")
    public Optional<Player> getPlayer(@PathVariable Long id) {
        return playerService.getPlayerById(id);
    }

PlayerService.java

public interface PlayerService {

    List<Player> getAllPlayers();
    Optional<Player> getPlayerById(Long id);
}

PlayerServiceImpl.java

    @Override
    public Optional<Player> getPlayerById(Long id) {
        return playerRepository.findById(id);
        }

When I test this using Postman, for players which id actually exists I get the player object but if I put a non existing id i get null

I’ve tried then checking if player object is null to return some kind of message like so:

    @Override
    public Optional<Player> getPlayerById(Long id) {
        Optional<Player> player = playerRepository.findById(id);
        if (player == null) { // warning
            //some message
            ;
        }

But when I wrote if statement I got a warning Condition 'player == null' is always 'false'
If the warning is true how do I get null from Postman ?