Parsing of null String fields changed behavior between version 2.11.4 and 2.12.x and newer

[Crim]

Almost the same as #473 , apologies for not catching the changed behavior of strings at the same time as posting that issue.

Running version 2.11.4 using the following configuration:

        // Create new mapper
        final JacksonXmlModule module = new JacksonXmlModule();
        module.setDefaultUseWrapper(false);

        final XmlMapper mapper = new XmlMapper(module);

        // Configure it
        mapper
            .configure(DeserializationFeature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES, false)
            .setPropertyNamingStrategy(PropertyNamingStrategy.SNAKE_CASE)
            .registerModule(new JodaModule())
            .setDateFormat(new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"));

Parsing the following xml:

        <campaign>
            <id>123</id>
            <name/>
        </campaign>

into the following bean:

public class Campaign {
    private Long id;
    private String name;

    public Long getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setId(final Long id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    public void setName(final String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
}

usage:

  // mapper instance as defined above, campaignXmlStr as defined above.
  mapper.readValue(campaignXmlStr, Campaign.class);

The above JSON gets deserialized into the bean with the name property being set to null.

With version 2.12.x and newer the name property becomes "" (empty string)

Is this considered a bug? Or expected behavior for newer versions? Is there a way to revert to the previous behavior via config?

Thanks!

[cowtowncoder]

There is setting

FromXmlParser.EMPTY_ELEMENT_AS_NULL

which may be relevant here. But other than that the new behavior is considered correct for String values: there really is no good way to indicate null in XML except by using xsi:nil="true" marker.
That marker is processed if FromXmlParser.PROCESS_XSI_NIL is true (which is the default setting).

[Crim]

Awesome, that worked perfectly. Thanks for sorting me out!