"null" values in JSON

["GVN, Anila Kumar" <AnilaKumar.GVN@ca.com>]

Hi,

Recently I was using Apache Olingo to expose OData V4 services. The JSON responses had a lot of "null" valued property entries which made responses too bloated. When I asked the question in Olingo forum, they said that the SPEC is NOT CLEAR about excluding them so they ought to be included.

To me thats a problem. IMHO, unless client asks for it, null valued property entries should not be present and will only make JSON too verbose and heavy for consumption in certain cases. I understand $select can be employed but imagine a initial dataset for consumption where a lot of fields are still empty and clients makes a GET on EntitySet.

Or should we have a means in the spec for client to state in Accept header that he doesn't need "null" values?

Any comments?

Thanks & Regards

Anil