The Movie Database Support
Support → API Support
New documentation and absence of "or null"
posted by pajatopmrSTAFFMOD on July 5, 2023 at 8:55 AM
I recently noticed the new API documentation (looks very nice, btw) and observed that a lot of fields previously marked "some-type or null" in the old documentation no longer have the "or null" specified. However, API requests still supply null values where the new documentation does not specify that they will be there. I suspect there is some statement about nulls that I may have missed. Can someone provide a link, reference or statement that I can use as a guide in my app on where TMDB might supply null values unexpectedly or how I can know when to expect null values. That would be much appreciated.
Reply by pajatopmr
on July 6, 2023 at 7:42 AM
After doing some searching, I now believe the current documentation is the old documentation with a new face that does not indicate where nulls are relevant. Love to hear that I'm wrong.
Reply by Visne
on February 9, 2024 at 9:27 PM
I think you are correct, and this is quite sad.
Reply by rednaz
on June 24, 2024 at 6:44 AM
I've stumbled across this recently when trying to get some robustness around the API. It's hard to write defensive code when you aren't sure what can be null. Surely the only option isn't to just assume everything can be null?
Reply by Travis Bell
on June 25, 2024 at 2:08 PM
Our hands are unfortunately tied until ReadMe (our docs provider) adds supports this. At this time, I am not able to change it because it's not supported.