I believe this should be done at the API level, in order to benefit other applications that use the API. I don't think it should be done automagically (e.g., with an OpenmrsObjectSaveHandler) for two reasons: (1) there may be cases were an empty string and null are semantically different and (2) aspect-oriented changes like this are not without a cost (they can add up to real performance hits).
How about an annotation on the property like @BlankValue(persist=NULL|BLANK)? … or maybe we should just switch to Oracle <http://maml.in/nsmnbB>. ;-) -Burke On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 3:52 PM, Darius Jazayeri <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi All, > > The way that our webapp, our API, and the DB interact, we frequently run > into the case where we store empty strings in the database for values, when > they really should be null. > > For example if you save a Concept Source and leave the HL7 Code field > blank, you save a row with concept_source.hl7_code = '' rather than null. > (Because the webapp submits an empty input, and we use spring MVC to bind > that to a bean property.) > > Two tickets that I looked at today are related to this (and there are > certainly others): > https://tickets.openmrs.org/browse/TRUNK-2516 > https://tickets.openmrs.org/browse/TRUNK-2004 > > We should try to fix this problem in a general way. At first thought I > can't come up with a case where we really want to save the empty string in a > database field rather than null. So some possible solutions are: > > - (at the web level) use a custom PropertyEditor for the String class > in all our Spring controllers, so that if you submit "" and bind that to a > String property, it sets it to null. > - (at the API level) in OpenmrsObjectSaveHandler iterate over all > String properties and if any of them are "" then set them to null. > > (The first would allow API consumers to explicitly set empty string > properties on objects, while the second wouldn't.) > > Any thoughts on this? > _________________________________________ To unsubscribe from OpenMRS Developers' mailing list, send an e-mail to [email protected] with "SIGNOFF openmrs-devel-l" in the body (not the subject) of your e-mail. [mailto:[email protected]?body=SIGNOFF%20openmrs-devel-l]
