Probably not, empty values from all kvision form controls are always converted to `null`.

# kvision

[Robert Jaros]

Probably not, empty values from all kvision form controls are always converted to null.

[Tomas Kormanak]

What is the reason for it? It forces me to give up implicit null safe checks and define all bind properties nullable.

[Robert Jaros]

For consistency, all form controls with different types (string, number, date) return null when no value is provided. I think it would be misleading to use empty strings instead of null for one type only.

[Robert Jaros]

What is your use case?

[Robert Jaros]

Do you use FormPanel<T> or just simple, standalone form control?

[Tomas Kormanak]

FormPanel

[Robert Jaros]

So I understand you would like to use as your model a data class with val field: String = "" instead of val field: String? = null ?

[Tomas Kormanak]

exactly

[Robert Jaros]

I will experiment a bit and let you know if it could be fixed somehow

[Robert Jaros]

It seems the cause of your problem is another bug (?) in decodeFromDynamic. I've managed to fix form default values by replacing this function with decodeFromString(kotlin.js.JSON.stringify(nativeObj)).

[Robert Jaros]

I don't trust decodeFromDynamic anymore 🙂
I'll remove it from RestClient as well in the next release.

[Robert Jaros]

After fixing the issue you will be able to use any nullable or not nullable fields in the forms model, as long as there are any default values (even not empty like 0, "-", Date()) in the data class.

[Tomas Kormanak]

I was debuging decodeFromDynamic the other day, the problem is that the function treat null as object, because in JS typeOf(null) is "object"

[Robert Jaros]

Probably you should fill an issue to kotlinx.serialization with the details

[Robert Jaros]

anyway, I'll remove it from KVision code

[Tomas Kormanak]

I am going to, I just want to investigate it a bit and write test for it.