Re: [hibernate-dev] [HSEARCH-566] Indexing null values for an @ElementCollection
On Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:44:13 +0200, Sanne Grinovero <sanne(a)hibernate.org>
wrote:
In case you would have a
@ElementCollection
@Field(indexNullAsl="nullToken")
String[] tags
having the value {"A","B",null}
I would expect this to be encoded in the index with three field
writes, all named "tags", and having values "A", "B",
"nullToken".
+1
But what if the array value is null by itself?
Personally I would expect it to *not* write anything, not encode the
"nullToken" which is reserved for an element being null: not having
the collection itself means in my opinion that there are no elements,
being similar as having an empty collection.
+1
I think in combination w/ @ElementCollection the @Fiels annotations tells
you what do to with the elements of the array/collection not the
array/collection
itself.
An alternative way could be to write the "nullToken" in
both cases,
but I'm not liking this much as it would imply that the item will
match for a search similar to "all items having a null tag", while in
fact it had no tags at all.
I don't like this approach either.
I'd avoid adding more options as it would need a new annotation,
or
adding options to other annotations which only apply in this case.
What do others think?
Are you talking about some sort of @ElelemntCollectionField (w/ the same
semantics as
@Field, but limited for the usecase of element collections?
Adding such an annotation would reduce ambiguities imo, but of course
there would be
one more annotation. Are there any other disadvantages?
--Hardy