Proposal: nullable wrapper class for primitive data types (int, Number, Boolean)

[Lars T Hansen]

Those pages are probably somewhat out of date.

At present we have Boolean, Number, and String which are nullable
wrapper classes for boolean, double, and string, respectively.  Is
there a particular reason you would need specific wrappers for int and
could not make do with Number?

If the recordset "will return a null value for an int typed column"
then arguably the type of the column is (int,null), not int.  The
former is expressible in ECMAScript 4 either like that or as "int?".
Will that not do?

--lars

On 9/21/07, Anderson, Todd <todd at bluecliff.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Hello,
>
>
>
> Background ES4 WIKI:
> http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=proposals:nullability
>
> Background Flexcoders Discussion:
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/message/88001
>
>
>
> Issue: When working with sql database record sets, often the recordset will
> return a null value for an int or boolean typed column.  This means the
> column is in a state of "value undetermined" or "not yet set".  When a
> recordset is returned into a Adobe Flex 2 VO containing, for instance, an
> int, the value is reduced to the default value of 0.  Since "not yet
> determined" and 0 are not equivalent, then this becomes an erroneous
> conversion and will corrupt any update calls back to the database.  Since
> the primitive types are not extensible, then there is no current workaround
> for this issue.
>
>
>
> Proposal: To allow for a wrapper classes that will enable nullable primitive
> data types.  Therefore, the type of int, Boolean, Number, etc will still
> remain the same (not nullable), however a proposed type of NullInt,
> NullBoolean and NullNumber would behave the same as the primitive types,
> except allowing them to be set to null.
>
>
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> Rationale: Allowing a change such as this allows developers who work with
> database recordsets (the vast majority) to accurately reflect the data that
> is in the database.  If the data in the database is automatically converted
> to a default value in a "hidden" way, then many developers will have an
> error situation on their hands and may not know why.
>
>
>
> Thank You.
>
>
>
> -Todd Anderson
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>