[BEANUTILS-473] Backward compatibility - copying null values to primitive types

• Type: Bug
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: 1.9.2
• Component/s: Bean / Property Utils
• Labels: IllegalArgumentException backwards-compatibility null-values
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Sven Raddatz
• Created: 07/Jan/15 09:38
• Updated: 29/Jul/16 11:59

Description

Copying a NULL value to a primitve property in destination bean (e.g. boolean) was silently ignored in BU 1.7.0. In 1.9.2 this is throwing an IllegalArgumentException.

Since converters are not executed when value is null there is no way to prevent this behaviour, making it hard to migrate from 1.7.0 to 1.9.2. The only way to accomplish this task is to switch from primitive to non-primitive types in all destination beans, which would result in huge testing effort.

It would be nice to either have the possibility to use convertes to handle null values with a valid default (e.g. null = false in case of boolean) or to globally have a switch for a "silent / lenient mode" where any exceptions during copying are silently ignored.