Indicate when object property is empty

[andrii-balitskyi]

No description provided.

[DebbieAtSeam]

Suggested change

	This object has no properties.
	This resource has no properties.

Should this be "object" or "resource"?

[DebbieAtSeam]

@andrii-balitskyi Is there an example of an object/resource that has no props? Thanks!

[andrii-balitskyi]

It doesn't relate directly to a resource but to a property of a resource. Example: 5641393 (#520)

[DebbieAtSeam]

Ah ha! Now that I saw the example that you linked, I understand. You were correct to use "object."

This is a separate question: What is the use of a property of a resource being an object with no properties? In the example that you linked, there's a result object, but it doesn't have any props, so what purpose does it serve?

[andrii-balitskyi]

Not every action attempt has a result. Attempts without a result return an empty object. I'm not sure why we default to an empty object instead of a value that represents emptiness more precisely, like null. Maybe @razor-x can shed some light on this.

[razor-x]

@andrii-balitskyi If there was a documented property (other than action_attempt.result) that was an empty object, this is likely a mistake and we could add it to the doc report.

As for action_attempt.result, it starts null, and then once the action attempt is success it resolves to a non-null (possibly empty) object. IMO this is an ok pattern, and changing it at this point might be a breaking change for some. The best justification for this I can cook up is that result is like a response, e.g., our API always returns at least a {} on a 200. For action attempts that return success, we always return at least a {} for the result (the "delayed response").