More consistent null handling

We're fixing edge cases and standardizing how null is treated

Marty Pitt@marty_pitt17 July 2025

There are some important changes coming in 0.36 around how null is treated in a projection, to be more consistent.

Previously, we were inconsistent (and sometimes, just flat-out wrong) with how null was treated:

• Sometimes null would return null
• Sometimes null would return an empty list
• Sometimes null would return a list containing an object, but everything was null 🤯

Also, for legacy reasons, the behaviour was different depending on where the null was encountered (the “find” phase of a query, vs a projection)

As of 0.36, the rule is simply:

A value of null always projects to null

There’s a few places where this behavior is different from previous versions:

• Services that return an empty response, like an HTTP 204, used to be treated as a special empty object - but is now returned as null
• Services that are declared to return an array, and return an empty response (like an HTTP 204), used to result in an array of an empty object - it now correctly returns null

For example - this snippet now (correctly) fails, whereas previously it would return an empty object:

​Use coalesce

Generally speaking, if you have a null, and want something other than null returned, you can coalesce it, using the ?: operator:

You can also coalesce individual properties:

​New StdLib functions

We’ve added some new functions to the StdLib to provide backwards compatability, for those who require it.

​ifEmpty()

Docs

An extension function against collections, that returns the default if the provided value is empty.

​emptyInstance()

Docs

There’s now an emptyInstance() member, which will return an instance of the requested type, but where:

• Scalars are null
• Collections are []
• Objects are recursed into, applying the above rules

This is useful where type coercion matters.

• The type of Person ?: {} is Any
• The type of Person ?: Person.emptyInstance() is Person
• The type of Person[] ?: [{}] is Any[]
• The type of Person[] ?: [Person.emptyInstance()] is Person[]