[Question] Handling nullable value types

[dri-richard]

What is your question?

We're working with a customer who has a sizeable Firestore database, and we're developing new client software in Unity. Previously they used native SDKs.

The problem is that occasionally a document has a null value for e.g. a boolean field, and DocumentSnapshot.ConvertTo() raises an exception:

System.ArgumentException: Unable to convert null value to System.Boolean at Firebase.Firestore.ValueDeserializer.Deserialize (Firebase.Firestore.DeserializationContext context, Firebase.Firestore.FieldValueProxy value, System.Type targetType)

However, we're also not able to use nullable values, which produce this error:

System.NotSupportedException: Profile.newFlag is Nullable value type, which we do not support now due to a Unity limitation. Try using a reference type instead.

What are my options for handling this situation? Should I create a FirestoreConverter for any document type that I suspect may in future be affected? Or is there something else I could do?
thanks

Firebase Unity SDK Version

11.8.1

Unity editor version

2022.3.31f1

Installation Method

.unitypackage

Problematic Firebase Component(s)

Firestore

Other Firebase Component(s) in use

Authentication, Crashlytics, DynamicLinks, Storage, Remote Config

Additional SDKs you are using

No response

Targeted Platform(s)

Apple Platforms

Unity editor platform

Mac

Scripting Runtime

IL2CPP

Release Distribution Type

Pre-built SDK from https://firebase.google.com/download/unity

[google-oss-bot]

I couldn't figure out how to label this issue, so I've labeled it for a human to triage. Hang tight.

[cherylEnkidu]

Hi @dri-richard , thank you for filling out this ticket! Could you please further explain your use case here by providing some code snippets?

[google-oss-bot]

Hey @dri-richard. We need more information to resolve this issue but there hasn't been an update in 5 weekdays. I'm marking the issue as stale and if there are no new updates in the next 5 days I will close it automatically.

If you have more information that will help us get to the bottom of this, just add a comment!

[dri-richard]

Currently, our customer has modifed the data in the Firebase console to resolve the error so I'm waiting permission to temporarily reintroduce problematic data for testing and to verify the code path.