Implementing the logic in the Association class to create an empty

association value

src/ORM/Association.php

@@ -463,6 +463,24 @@ public function transformRow($row, $nestKey, $joined) {
 		return $row;
 	}
 
+/**
+ * Returns a modified row after appending a property for this association
+ * with the default empty value according to whether the association was
+ * joined or fetched externally.
+ *
+ * @param array $row
+ * @param boolean $joined Whether or not the row is a result of a direct join
+ * with this association
+ * @return array
+ */
+	public function defaultRowValue($row, $joined) {
+		$sourceAlias = $this->source()->alias();
+		if (isset($row[$sourceAlias])) {
+			$row[$sourceAlias][$this->property()] = $joined ? null : [];
+		}
+		return $row;
+	}
+
 /**
  * Proxies the finding operation to the target table's find method
  * and modifies the query accordingly based of this association

src/ORM/ResultSet.php

@@ -387,11 +387,13 @@ protected function _groupResult($row) {
 
 		foreach (array_reverse($this->_associationMap) as $assoc) {
 			$alias = $assoc['nestKey'];
+			$instance = $assoc['instance'];
+
 			if (!isset($results[$alias])) {
+				$results = $instance->defaultRowValue($results, $assoc['canBeJoined']);
 				continue;
 			}
 
-			$instance = $assoc['instance'];
 			$target = $instance->target();
 			$options['source'] = $target->alias();
 			unset($presentAliases[$alias]);