Should functions return null or an empty object?

Question

What is the best practice when returning data from functions. Is it better to return a Null or an empty object? And why should one do one over the other?

Consider this:

public UserEntity GetUserById(Guid userId)
{
     //Imagine some code here to access database.....

     //Check if data was returned and return a null if none found
     if (!DataExists)
        return null; 
        //Should I be doing this here instead? 
        //return new UserEntity();  
     else
        return existingUserEntity;
}

Lets pretend that there would be valid cases in this program that there would be no user information in the database with that GUID. I Would imagine that it would not be appropriate to throw an exception in this case?? Also I am under the impression that exception handling can hurt performance.

Answer 1

Returning null is usually the best idea if you intend to indicate that no data is available.

An empty object implies data has been returned, whereas returning null clearly indicates that nothing has been returned.

Additionally, returning a null will result in a null exception if you attempt to access members in the object, which can be useful for highlighting buggy code - attempting to access a member of nothing makes no sense. Accessing members of an empty object will not fail meaning bugs can go undiscovered.

Answer 2

It depends on what makes the most sense for your case.

Does it make sense to return null, e.g. "no such user exists"?

Or does it make sense to create a default user? This makes the most sense when you can safely assume that if a user DOESN'T exist, the calling code intends for one to exist when they ask for it.

Or does it make sense to throw an exception (a la "FileNotFound") if the calling code is demanding a user with an invalid ID?

However - from a separation of concerns/SRP standpoint, the first two are more correct. And technically the first is the most correct (but only by a hair) - GetUserById should only be responsible for one thing - getting the user. Handling its own "user does not exist" case by returning something else could be a violation of SRP. Separating into a different check - bool DoesUserExist(id) would be appropriate if you do choose to throw an exception.

Based on extensive comments below: if this is an API-level design question, this method could be analogous to "OpenFile" or "ReadEntireFile". We are "opening" a user from some repository and hydrating the object from the resultant data. An exception could be appropriate in this case. It might not be, but it could be.

All approaches are acceptable - it just depends, based on the larger context of the API/application.

Answer 3

I personally would return null, because that is how I would expect the DAL/Repository layer to act.

If it doesn't exist, don't return anything that could be construed as successfully fetching an object, null works beautifully here.

The most important thing is to be consistant across your DAL/Repos Layer, that way you don't get confused on how to use it.

Answer 4

This is a business question, dependent on whether the existence of a user with a specific Guid Id is an expected normal use case for this function, or is it an anomaly that will prevent the application from successfully completing whatever function this method is providing the user object to...

If it's an "exception", in that the absence of a user with that Id will prevent the application from successfully completing whatever function it is doing, (Say we're creating an invoice for a customer we've shipped product to...), then this situation should throw an ArgumentException (or some other custom exception).

If a missing user is ok, (one of the potential normal outcomes of calling this function) then return a null....

EDIT: (to address comment from Adam in another answer)

If the application contains multiple business processes, one or more of which require a User in order to complete successfully, and one or more of which can complete successfully without a user, then the exception should be thrown further up the call stack, closer to where the business processes which require a User are calling this thread of execution. Methods between this method and that point (where the exception is being thrown) should just communicate that no user exists (null, boolean, whatever - this is an implementation detail).

But if all processes within the application require a user, I would still throw the exception in this method...

Answer 5

It will vary based on context, but I will generally return null if I'm looking for one particular object (as in your example) and return an empty collection if I'm looking for a set of objects but there are none.

If you've made a mistake in your code and returning null leads to null pointer exceptions, then the sooner you catch that the better. If you return an empty object, initial use of it may work, but you may get errors later.

Answer 6

Personally, I use NULL. It makes clear that there is no data to return. But there are cases when a Null Object may be usefull.

Answer 7

I typically return null. It provides a quick and easy mechanism to detect if something screwed up without throwing exceptions and using tons of try/catch all over the place.

Answer 8

If your return type is an array then return an empty array otherwise return null.

Answer 9

The best in this case return "null" in a case there no a such user. Also make your method static.

Edit:

Usually methods like this are members of some "User" class and don't have an access to its instance members. In this case the method should be static, otherwise you must create an instance of "User" and then call GetUserById method which will return another "User" instance. Agree this is confusing. But if GetUserById method is member of some "DatabaseFactory" class - no problem to leave it as an instance member.

Answer 10

You should throw an exception (only) if a specific contract is broken.
In your specific example, asking for a UserEntity based on a known Id, it would depend on the fact if missing (deleted) users are an expected case. If so, then return null but if it is not an expected case then throw an exception.
Note that if the function was called UserEntity GetUserByName(string name) it would probably not throw but return null. In both cases returning an empty UserEntity would be unhelpful.

For strings, arrays and collections the situation is usually different. I remember some guideline form MS that methods should accept null as an 'empty' list but return collections of zero-length rather than null. The same for strings. Note that you can declare empty arrays: int[] arr = new int[0];

Answer 11

In our Business Objects we have 2 main Get methods:

To keep things simple in the context or you question they would be:

// Returns null if user does not exist
public UserEntity GetUserById(Guid userId)
{
}

// Returns a New User if user does not exist
public UserEntity GetNewOrExistingUserById(Guid userId)
{
}

The first method is used when getting specific entities, the second method is used specifically when adding or editing entities on web pages.

This enables us to have the best of both worlds in the context where they are used.

Answer 12

I personally return a default instance of the object. The reason is that I expect the method to return zero to many or zero to one (depending on the method's purpose). The only reason that it would be an error state of any kind, using this approach, is if the method returned no object(s) and was always expected to (in terms of a one to many or singular return).

As to the assumption that this is a business domain question - I just do not see it from that side of the equation. Normalization of return types is a valid application architecture question. At the very least, it is subject for standardization in coding practices. I doubt that there is a business user who is going to say "in scenario X, just give them a null".

Answer 13

For collection types I would return an Empty Collection, for all other types I prefer using the NullObject patterns for returning an object that implements the same interface as that of the returning type. for details about the pattern check out link text

Using the NullObject pattern this would be :-

public UserEntity GetUserById(Guid userId)

{ //Imagine some code here to access database.....

 //Check if data was returned and return a null if none found
 if (!DataExists)
    return new NullUserEntity(); //Should I be doing this here instead? return new UserEntity();  
 else
    return existingUserEntity;

}

class NullUserEntity: IUserEntity { public string getFirstName(){ return ""; } ...}

Answer 14

I'd say return null instead of an empty object.

But the specific instance that you have mentioned here, you are searching for an user by user id, which is sort of the key to that user, in that case I'd probably want to to throw an exception if no user instance instance is found.

This is the rule I generally follow:

• If no result found on a find by primary key operation, throw ObjectNotFoundException.
• If no result found on a find by any other criteria, return null.
• If no result found on a find by a non-key criteria that may return a multiple objects return an empty collection.

Answer 15

We use CSLA.NET, and it takes the view that a failed data fetch should return an "empty" object. This is actually quite annoying, as it demands the convention of checking whether obj.IsNew rathern than obj == null.

As a previous poster mentioned, null return values will cause code to fail straight away, reducing the likelihood of stealth problems caused by empty objects.

Personally, I think null is more elegant.

It's a very common case, and I'm surprised that people here seem surprised by it: on any web application, data is often fetched using a querystring parameter, which can obviously be mangled, so requiring that the developer handle incidences of "not found".

You could handle this by:

if (User.Exists(id)) {
  this.User = User.Fetch(id);
} else {
  Response.Redirect("~/notfound.aspx");
}

...but that's an extra call to the database every time, which may be an issue on high-traffic pages. Whereas:

this.User = User.Fetch(id);

if (this.User == null) {
  Response.Redirect("~/notfound.aspx");
}

...requires only one call.

Answer 16

I prefer null, since it's compatible with the null-coalescing operator (??).

Answer 17

To put what others have said in a pithier manner...

Exceptions are for Exceptional circumstances

If this method is pure data access layer, I would say that given some parameter that gets included in a select statement, it would expect that I may not find any rows from which to build an object, and therefore returning null would be acceptable as this is data access logic.

On the other hand, if I expected my parameter to reflect a primary key and I should only get one row back, if I got more than one back I would throw an exception. 0 is ok to return null, 2 is not.

Now, if I had some login code that checked against an LDAP provider then checked against a DB to get more details and I expected those should be in sync at all times, I might toss the exception then. As others said, it's business rules.

Now I'll say that is a general rule. There are times where you may want to break that. However, my experience and experiments with C# (lots of that) and Java(a bit of that) has taught me that it is much more expensive performance wise to deal with exceptions than to handle predictable issues via conditional logic. I'm talking to the tune of 2 or 3 orders of magnitude more expensive in some cases. So, if it's possible your code could end up in a loop, then I would advise returning null and testing for it.

Answer 18

Forgive my pseudo-php/code.

I think it really depends on the intended use of the result.

If you intend to edit/modify the return value and save it, then return an empty object. That way, you can use the same function to populate data on a new or existing object.

Say I have a function that takes a primary key and an array of data, fills the row with data, then saves the resulting record to the db. Since I'm intending to populate the object with my data either way, it can be a huge advantage to get an empty object back from the getter. That way, I can perform identical operations in either case. You use the result of the getter function no matter what.

Example:

function saveTheRow($prim_key, $data) {
    $row = getRowByPrimKey($prim_key);

    // Populate the data here

    $row->save();
}

Here we can see that the same series of operations manipulates all records of this type.

However, if the ultimate intent of the return value is to read and do something with the data, then I would return null. This way, I can very quickly determine if there was no data returned and display the appropriate message to the user.

Usually, I'll catch exceptions in my function that retrieves the data (so I can log error messages, etc...) then return null straight from the catch. It generally doesn't matter to the end user what the problem is, so I find it best to encapsulate my error logging/processing directly in the function that gets the data. If you're maintaining a shared codebase in any large company this is especially beneficial because you can force proper error logging/handling on even the laziest programmer.

Example:

function displayData($row_id) {
    // Logging of the error would happen in this function
    $row = getRow($row_id);
    if($row === null) {
        // Handle the error here
    }

    // Do stuff here with data
}

function getRow($row_id) {
 $row = null;
 try{
     if(!$db->connected()) {
   throw excpetion("Couldn't Connect");
  }

  $result = $db->query($some_query_using_row_id);

  if(count($result) == 0 ) {
   throw new exception("Couldn't find a record!");
  }

  $row = $db->nextRow();

 } catch (db_exception) {
  //Log db conn error, alert admin, etc...
  return null; // This way I know that null means an error occurred
 }
 return $row;
}

That's my general rule. It's worked well so far.

Answer 19

Hi, I'm a french IT student, so excuse my poor english. In our classes we are being told that such a method should never return null, nor an empty object. The user of this method is supposed to check first that the object he is looking for exists before trying to get it.

Using Java, we are asked to add a assert exists(object) : "You shouldn't try to access an object that doesn't exist"; at the beginning of any method that could return null, to express the "precondition" (I don't know what is the word in english).

IMO this is really not easy to use but that's what I'm using, waiting for something better.

Answer 20

If the case of the user not being found comes up often enough, and you want to deal with that in various ways depending on circumstance (sometimes throwing an exception, sometimes substituting an empty user) you could also use something close to F#'s Option or Haskell's Maybe type, which explicitly seperates the 'no value' case from 'found something!'. The database access code could look like this:

public Option<UserEntity> GetUserById(Guid userId)
{
 //Imagine some code here to access database.....

 //Check if data was returned and return a null if none found
 if (!DataExists)
    return Option<UserEntity>.Nothing; 
 else
    return Option.Just(existingUserEntity);
}

And be used like this:

Option<UserEntity> result = GetUserById(...);
if (result.IsNothing()) {
    // deal with it
} else {
    UserEntity value = result.GetValue();
}

Unfortunately, everybody seems to roll a type like this of their own.

Answer 21

More meat to grind: let's say my DAL returns a NULL for GetPersonByID as advised by some. What should my (rather thin) BLL do if it receives a NULL? Pass that NULL on up and let the end consumer worry about it (in this case, an ASP.Net page)? How about having the BLL throw an exception?

The BLL may be being used by ASP.Net and Win App, or another class library - I think it is unfair to expect the end consumer to intrinsically "know" that the method GetPersonByID returns a null (unless null types are used, I guess).

My take (for what it's worth) is that my DAL returns NULL if nothing is found. FOR SOME OBJECTS, that's ok - it could be a 0:many list of things, so not having any things is fine (e.g. a list of favourite books). In this case, my BLL returns an empty list. For most single entity things (e.g. user, account, invoice) if I don't have one, then that's definitely a problem and a throw a costly exception. However, seeing as retrieving a user by a unique identifier that's been previously given by the application should always return a user, the exception is a "proper" exception, as in it's exceptional. The end consumer of the BLL (ASP.Net, f'rinstance) only ever expects things to be hunky-dory, so an Unhandled Exception Handler will be used instead of wrapping every single call to GetPersonByID in a try - catch block.

If there is a glaring problem in my approach, please let me know as I am always keen to learn. As other posters have said, exceptions are costly things, and the "checking first" approach is good, but exceptions should be just that - exceptional.

I'm enjoying this post, lot's of good suggestions for "it depends" scenarios :-)

Answer 22

Interesting question and I think there is no "right" answer, since it always depends on the responsibility of your code. Does your method know if no found data is a problem or not? In most cases the answer is "no" and that's why returning null and letting the caller handling he situation is perfect.

Maybe a good approach to distinguish throwing methods from null-returning methods is to find a convention in your team: Methods that say they "get" something should throw an exception if there is nothing to get. Methods that may return null could be named differently, perhaps "Find..." instead.

Answer 23

If the object returned is something that can be iterated over, I would return an empty object, so that I don't have to test for null first.

Example:

bool IsAdministrator(User user)
{
    var groupsOfUser = GetGroupsOfUser(user);

    // This foreach would cause a run time exception if groupsOfUser is null.
    foreach (var groupOfUser in groupsOfUser) 
    {
        if (groupOfUser.Name == "Administrators")
        {
            return true;
        }
    }

    return false;
}

Answer 24

Yet another approach involves passing in a callback object or delegate that will operate on the value. If a value is not found, the callback is not called.

public void GetUserById(Guid id, UserCallback callback)
{
    // Lookup user
    if (userFound)
        callback(userEntity);  // or callback.Call(userEntity);
}

This works well when you want to avoid null checks all over your code, and when not finding a value isn't an error. You may also provide a callback for when no objects are found if you need any special processing.

public void GetUserById(Guid id, UserCallback callback, NotFoundCallback notFound)
{
    // Lookup user
    if (userFound)
        callback(userEntity);  // or callback.Call(userEntity);
    else
        notFound(); // or notFound.Call();
}

The same approach using a single object might look like:

public void GetUserById(Guid id, UserCallback callback)
{
    // Lookup user
    if (userFound)
        callback.Found(userEntity);
    else
        callback.NotFound();
}

From a design perspective, I really like this approach, but has the disadvantage of making the call site bulkier in languages that don't readily support first class functions.

Answer 25

I tend to

• return null if the object id doesn't exist when it's not known beforehand whether it should exist.
• throw if the object id doesn't exist when it should exist.

I differentiate these two scenarios with these three types of methods. First:

Boolean TryGetSomeObjectById(Int32 id, out SomeObject o)
{
    if (InternalIdExists(id))
    {
        o = InternalGetSomeObject(id);

        return true;
    }
    else
    {
        return false;
    }
}

Second:

SomeObject FindSomeObjectById(Int32 id)
{
    SomeObject o;

    return TryGetObjectById(id, out o) ? o : null;
}

Third:

SomeObject GetSomeObjectById(Int32 id)
{
    SomeObject o;

    if (!TryGetObjectById(id, out o))
    {
        throw new SomeAppropriateException();
    }

    return o;
}