Re: [SQLObject] Default Behaviour when notNull == False

[Brad B. <br...@bb...>]

On 04/30/03 15:54, Ian Bicking wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-04-30 at 10:29, Nick wrote:
> > On Wed, 2003-04-30 at 08:55, Brad Bollenbach wrote:
> > > Can we change the behaviour of this to "feel" more like an SQL insert,
> > > so that if a column's allowed to be null, I don't have to specify it
> > > in the new()?
> > 
> > This patch should do what you want.  Note that I've changed notNull to
> > default to True instead of False, because it seems to make more sense to
> > do so.  If you *don't' specify a keyword argument to new, I would think
> > you would *want* to see an error there instead if you didn't
> > specifically tell it to not expect one.
> 
> I don't know... just because you don't give a default, you can still use
> None for a value (assuming the column allows NULL).
> 
> It was my intention to make the default explicit, even if it isn't
> explicit in SQL, so default=None does what Brad wants.  I can see why it
> would be inconvenient, but only slightly, and I think that's countered
> by it being a useful discipline (and more closely matching Python, which
> doesn't use implicit defaults).

To me:

    default=None

reads essentially "if no value is specified, this column has no
value", which is redundant. I think it would be reasonable for
SQLObject to internalize the default=None when no default value is
specified, in much the same way that I'm always writing functions
like:

    def foo(bar, baz = None):
        x = bar
        if baz is not None:
            ....

What do you guys think?

-- 
Brad Bollenbach
BBnet.ca