h:inputText which is bound to String property is submitting empty string instead of null

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You can configure JSF 2.x to interpret empty submitted values as null by the following context-param in web.xml (which has a pretty long name, that’ll also be why I couldn’t recall it 😉 ):

<context-param>
    <param-name>javax.faces.INTERPRET_EMPTY_STRING_SUBMITTED_VALUES_AS_NULL</param-name>
    <param-value>true</param-value>
</context-param>

For reference and for ones who are interested, in JSF 1.2 (and thus not 1.1 or older because it’s by design not possible to have a Converter for java.lang.String) this is workaroundable with the following Converter:

public class EmptyToNullStringConverter implements Converter {

    public Object getAsObject(FacesContext facesContext, UIComponent component, String submittedValue) {
        if (submittedValue == null || submittedValue.isEmpty()) {
            if (component instanceof EditableValueHolder) {
                ((EditableValueHolder) component).setSubmittedValue(null);
            }

            return null;
        }

        return submittedValue;
    }

    public String getAsString(FacesContext facesContext, UIComponent component, Object modelValue) {
        return (modelValue == null) ? "" : modelValue.toString();
    }

}

…which needs to be registered in faces-config.xml as follows:

<converter>
    <converter-for-class>java.lang.String</converter-for-class>
    <converter-class>com.example.EmptyToNullStringConverter</converter-class>
</converter>

In case you’re not on Java 6 yet, replace submittedValue.empty() by submittedValue.length() == 0.

See also

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