The distinction between nil and :null in Postmodern is a conscious decision. It makes the CL type 'boolean neatly correspond to Postgres booleans, and introduces a new type to indicate nullability. I've also had to write code to convert nils to :nulls in deep data structures a few occasions, but I think that this is a less problematic situation than having to convert boolean nils to :false.
Add to that backwards incompatibility, and I just don't think this is a worthwhile change to make. Best, Marijn On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 5:06 PM, Julien Danjou <jul...@danjou.info> wrote: > Hi there, > > I'm dealing with a problem and I'd like some enlightenment. > > I've a table with text columns that can't be NULL. > In my Lisp program, sometimes I'm assigning `nil' as value for this > column, either via a direct query execution or via the DAO. What I > would expect in this case, is to PostgreSQL to raise an error. > > But this does not happen. > > What happens is that (cl-postgres:to-sql-string nil) returns "false", > and that the query is built to: > > INSERT INTO mytable (mytextfield) VALUES (false); > > PostgreSQL implicit type conversion kicks in and insert the string > 'false' into the field, which does not trigger an error since this it > not NULL. > > The obvious fix here is to patch all my code to convert nil to :null, > but this is a pain. I don't want to do the type checking I'm doing with > PostgreSQL one more time in my application. > > What I'd like is for cl-postgres to consider nil as being NULL. > The boolean false value could be mapped as :false, which would also make > sure no code is inserting false just because a value is actually nil. > > The change is pretty trivial and I'm running with it right now, which > allowed me to debug a lot of implicit nil conversion to 'false' in text > fields. > > I recognize this is something that would break compatibility, so that > might be enabled via a defparameter or something. > > Does that sounds like a good idea, or do I miss an obvious problem? > > -- > Julien Danjou > ;; Free Software hacker ; freelance consultant > ;; http://julien.danjou.info
