FeatureRequest: Deserialize null to empty collection

He there,

Hi there, what to you think about adding the possibility to map null values to empty collections?

If I have a object

// pseudo code
class Person {
  String name
  List<String> nicknames = new ArrayList()
}

and a json

{
  "name": "jackson",
  "nicknames": null
}

it would be cool to get an instance where the nicknames collection is empty instead of null

  assert person.nicknames.size() == 0

Best regards, Leif

[saden1]

+1 …nulls are really evil!

[tadhgpearson]

+1 Would the best way to do it be a DeserializationFeature? For example DeserializationFeature.READ_NULL_ARRAY_AS_EMPTY_COLLECTION ?