How to post null values from h:inputText?

Question

Hello,
I have a form made of h:inputText fields that map to an entity class as the backing bean. Whenever I post the form from a web page, all the fields that I did not fill out and that are mapped to String fields in the entity class are set to "" (empty string) instead of null.
However, I would like to post null values to my entity, because that would indicate that the user did not fill out the field. In other contexts (outside of the web app) it is possible to set the fields to empty strings, but from the web app it should always be null. How can I get JSF to do this correctly?
Also, when reading entitys with null values from the database, these are converted to empty h:inputText fields, so this direction works as expected.
Ulrich

Answer 1

I haven't seen a solution for this as far.
This is how I do it:
public void action() {
    if (isEmpty(inputValue)) {
        // do your thing
    } else {
        // do your thing
public static boolean isEmpty(Object value) {
    if (value == null) {
        return true;
    if (value instanceof String && ((String) value).trim().length() == 0) {
        return true;
    if (value instanceof Collection && ((Collection) value).size() == 0) {
        return true;
    // And go so on .. make it an utility method.
    return false;
}