[jdom-interest] XMLOutputter & null pointer exception.

[Jason Hunter]

"Quigley, James P" wrote:
> 
> The larger issue is whether getText should return null for an empty 
> String.
> I looked at getTextTrim and it will
> return an empty String. I'd expect the two methods to return identical
> values for an empty string. My preference
> would be the empty string to avoid pesky null pointer exceptions.

In one way it's actually a bug in Element, because a setText("") creates
an empty String content node but then a getText() right after returns
null.  That caused XMLOutputter to get confused when it saw a single
String content node but got the null from getText().

I just did a CVS check-in so 'setText(""); getText()' returns "".  That
at least makes things work in the interim.

Now let's decide what we want long term.  What should getText() and
getMixedContent() return for all these?

<empty/>
<empty></empty>
setText("")
setText(null)

Having all return null for getText() and empty lists for
getMixedContent() seems like the best choice after 15 seconds of
thinking.  That would mean setText("") would act like setText(null).

-jh-