Best practices to implement nullable support for simple types in RO data structs

Remoting SDK
1

Our services(Delphi) communicate with clients(.Net and Delphi) and exchange
data structs defined in Service Builder.

Need to add nullable support for simple types(Integer, Double…) in RO data structs.
I know that currently this functionality is missing and I have to emulate this via
RODLStruct(ROComplexType).

I’m looking for ideas, because my implementations have disadvantages:

  1. Solution A

    <Struct Name=“NullableInteger” …>




Delphi:
Convenient to use NullableInteger due to ProductData.AutoCreateParams=“1”.
function ProductData.GetId: NullableInteger;
begin
if (fId = nil) then fId := NullableInteger.Create();
Result := fId;
end;

.Net:
Inconvenient to use due to the bug.
More details:
http://talk.remobjects.com/t/c-codegen-ignores-rodlstruct-autocreateparams-1-for-nested-structs/7646

  1. Solution B

    <Struct Name=“NullableInteger” …>



Inconvenient to use due to Service Builder has very limited configuration for AutoCreateParams.
More details:
http://talk.remobjects.com/t/how-to-disable-rodlstruct-autocreateparams/7678

  1. Solution C

Use Variant data type for nullable simple types.
Disadvantage: no type safety.

Regards
Delphi XE5, RemObjects SDK for Delphi and all Clients 8.3.93.1183

2

it will be solution A.
it was logged as #73848 .
I think, fix for this will be in next beta

3

Thanks, great news!

BTW, are there plans to add “native” nullable simple types in RO Data Types,
which will map to structs in c# and to records in Delphi?

Regards