How can I handle "Null" values when returning a Python dictionary through Thrift?

Question

I am using Thrift for a micro-service written in python.
I am returning a dictionary in python which can contain NULL values.

This is the code for my Python response handler:

def response(id, token):
    user_record = usertable.objects.get(uid = id)
    if user_record.token == token:
        response = dict(
            pa_uid = user_record.pa_uid,
            pa_token = user_record.pa_token,
            dev_id = user.dev_id
        )
        return response

The response function is the returning a dictionary and the dev_id key has a NULL value in many cases.
How can I to handle this in Thrift?

This is the code in my Thrift file:

service Calculator extends shared.SharedService {
  map<string,string>  response(1:string id, 2:string token),
}

When the dev_id key has a NULL value Thrift does not return a dictionary and an error is thrown by the Thrift Client.

Answer 1

There are 2 ways you can do this:

The ternary conditional operator

You can use the ternary conditional operator in the dev_id assignment.

dev_id = user.dev_id if user.dev_id != None else 'not_found'

Now u can check for 'not_found' value in the dictionary and handle it appropriately.

The or logical operator

The other option is to use or in assignment as Tom Barron has answered

dev_id = user.dev_id or 'no_dev'

Note: The use of or doesn't eliminate the corner case where the user.dev_id can have a falsy value like 0 in case of number or empty string in case of strings. Such falsy values will trigger or and assign 'no_dev' to dev_id. If such falsy values needs to be preserved then use the ternary conditional operator.