modRestService and empty XML tags

[Jako]

Summary

Bug or feature: Empty XML tags are converted into empty arrays in _xml2array method.

Step to reproduce

POST/PUT an empty tag to the modRestService

Observed behavior

The value is converted into an empty array.

Expected behavior

I would suggest, that it should be converted into null or into an empty string. But that's a design decision.

[pixelchutes]

Do we have any knowledge of internal logic currently relying on this behavior?

[Jako]

I haven't. With the current code it is not possible to update a record value with an empty value using the default put method. The value would contain Array after the put.

Those values have to be handled by a beforePut method

    public function beforePut()
    {
        foreach ($this->object->_fields as $fieldname => $field) {
            if (is_array($field) && empty($field)) {
                $this->object->set($fieldname, '');
            }
        }
        return true;
    }

[pixelchutes]

Do you have an example model (field/data type) this can be tested with? Looking to reproduce / verify, though I've only ever used JSON w/ modRestService.

[pixelchutes]

I was able to verify this report using a modRestController and an XML payload.

Updating via PUT using XML with empty string definitely is converting to Array. This does not happen when using JSON payloads, which appear to be functioning as expected.

My vote is that this is a bug 🐛