ELSupport coerceToXxx and null value

[Henrique <hl...@yahoo.com.br>]

Dear users and developers (at least those who check this list),

I am using Apache MyFaces 1.2, which delegates JSF EL to Commons EL. I am currently facing a tough problem with boolean values being set in a class. You see, I have a nullable boolean property in my class. This property is used (or not) in a search, so that I now have three possible values for a boolean property: true, false, and null (unset). When setting this property to the null, ELSupport.coerceToType(null, Boolean.class) is ultimately called, which returns false instead of null.

I understand that this is probably the designed behavior, but many times rules are applied differently for null values (e.g. Hibernate Criteria API search by example -- org.hibernate.criterion.Example). Is this likely to change anytime soon or should I just change my property to a three-valued enum?

ELSupport.java:
[SNIPPET]
public static final Boolean coerceToBoolean(Object obj) throws IllegalArgumentException 
{
        if (obj == null || "".equals(obj)) { // return null if obj == null
            return Boolean.FALSE;
        }
[/SNIPPET]

Best regards,

Henrique



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