[MDSAL-18] Return an empty list and never null from list-valued parameters in generated models

Relates — Thu, 22 Nov 2018 10:51:39 +0000

In our builders, we should never accept a null-valued list. When building the object, if the list-valued field is null, then we should set it to Collections.emptyList() instead. This makes writing code much more pleasant and really has no downside.

We have something like this:
// check if empty
if (myObjects.getListParam() == null || myObjects.getListParam().size() == 0) {
    // ...
}

becomes:
if (myObjects.getListParam().size() == 0) {
    // ...
}

And this:

if (myObjects.getListParam() != null) {
    for (ListValue v : myObjects.getListParam()) {
        // ...
    }
}

becomes:
for (ListValue v : myObjects.getListParam()) {
    // ...
}

Much nicer!

OpenDaylight JIRA

[MDSAL-18] Return an empty list and never null from list-valued parameters in generated models