Revision 1706316

A patch from Martin Becker for "data import - nulling fields impossible" https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-293

In my opinion it would be straight forward, if the entity import would treat fields that are mentioned in entity XML files as fields that should be updated always, as the GenericDAO does. The current logic ignores fields, if there is only an empty string as value.

The enhancement brought by the solution of OFBIZ-4949 makes it possible to generally configure an entity-engine-xml file to be interpreted as replacement, so that all NOT mentioned fields are set to NULL instead of leaving the old value while updating the entity.

Nevertheless I think, that the default (update) behavior, the one with fine grained control over which fields are touched, should also give the possibility to set field values to NULL by including them in the XML.

The solution with the lowest impact on existing XML files and the most natural meaning should be to interpret empty string values in the XML as NULL, as it is today. The only difference would be, that they are not longer ignored but set as NULL values in the database. The only drawback I see is, that you're still not able to set "empty string" values as concrete values to the database (no loss of function, because you can't do it today, too).

As far as I can see, there should be no conflict with current existing data files. There are some where for example a parentTypeId is contained with empty string as value. Interpreting it as NULL and setting in database is exactly what is meant by such a definition.