I have a structure that is populated within a foreach loop. At a certain point (in each cycle interaction) I have to clear the attribues of this structure. The idea I propose will be to be able to clear the variable through a "nullRecord" instead of doing an assignment where I am putting "null" for each attribute of the record.

Thank you.

Hi Fernando,

There's already a way to do that, creating an extra variable whose type is the structure and assigning it to the main variable to clear it. 

Does this work for you?

Cheers!

Hi Ricardo,

In fact that was the way that I did but seems to me that if we just assign our records to null it would be more intuitive.

Thanks for your feedback  ;)

Or a "RecordClear" function like there is "ListClear"? That would be nice and obvious what is happening and why.

J.Ja

Yes Justin, that could be awesome as well.

Thanks

Currently systems not allowing to assign null values to object and not able to assign empty to list variable as well.

Good to have null and empty assignments, it will be very useful when looping through objects.

I miss null too sometimes. There are things like NullIdentifier() and NullTextIdentifier() but they are not real nulls. 

This is an extremely deliberate decision:

https://www.outsystems.com/blog/outsystems-decreases-development-risk.html

J.Ja

Hi Sravan,

What kind of "objects" do you want to assign null to?

And for Lists there's the ListClear Action, why would you want to assign it an "empty value"?

I'm always creating a "Null Object" (local variable with nothing assigned) to be able to clear out everything from a structure.

Hi Kilian Hekhuis,

I have loop where I'm going through each object and doing some operation and every time my after my operation I want to assign object to null, but it throwing error error.

1. Declared Variable

2. While assignment I'm getting below error.

3. Only way I'm able to solve this scenario is by declaring new variable and use it in assignment.

This way I'm able to proceed further.

Do we have any better solution available ?

Hi Rebecca Hall,

Exactly.. I'm doing same thing.

Sravan

Hi Sravan,

When it comes to Structures, that's indeed the easiest way to do it (like Rebecca explained).

Sorry Guys,

I would have mentioned proper description specific to structures assignment.

Now I don't have option to modify Idea.

Sravan

I do what Rececca does, but a simple way of doing it without having to create a new variable would be good.

Either an action or a dummy NullObject() value you assign that causes outsystems to create a new empty variable behind the scenes and apply it.

NullObject() wouldn't be good for two reasons:

1. There's actually an Object data type, which is not a Structure;
2. NullObject() wouldn't have an actual data type, as it could be assigned to any Structure or Entity.

But I agree having something to "clear" a Structure/Entity would be good.

I was using that as an example.  Try "NullEntity()" then that outsystems automatically applies the right entity type to behind the scenes based on what is being set.

Hi All,

It would be very usefull if there was a function to clear automatically a local variable who has an entity datatype. This could be an action or a setting of the variable itself. 

Example:

entityName.variableA = "test" -> entityName.variableA = ""

entityName.variableB = "test" -> entityName.variableB = ""

Kind Regards,

Furkan Çetin