Update Record in a Feature Layer - treatment of null values

[NigelCharmanPre-Prod]

When updating a record in a feature layer, it appears that the treatment of null values has changed. Previously setting a field to null in the update caused a null/empty value in the field. Now the value is being set to 0 for integers, 0.00 for doubles, 1 Jan 1970 for dates.

I've reported this to ESRI support.

[AkshayHarshe]

@NigelCharmanPre-Prod Thanks for reporting that. May I know what connector, action or trigger you are using and how are you setting the null?

I tried using `Update record in a feature layer` action and it doesn't  use those defaults.

{
      "attributes" : {
        "FID" : 231, 
        "objectid" : null, 
        "name" : "Updated -test", 
        "address" : "test - Atlantic Ocean", 
        "city" : "", 
        "state" : "", 
        "zip" : null, 
        "ownership" : "Updated Test", 
        "ntl_rate" : null, 
        "mortreadmi" : 6, 
        "total" : 876, 
        "latitude" : 32, 
        "longitude" : -49, 
        "admissiond" : null, //Date
        "GlobalID" : "47a6a5e9-898a-4628-b8c6-e67d23c443a3"
      }

FYI, I am not passing anything in a those fields, 

[NigelCharmanPre-Prod]

Hi Akshay

It's the ArcGIS connector with the "Update a record in a feature layer" step.

We're getting the null values back from a "Get data from feature layer" step (running against a child table) and passing them to the "Update a record in a feature layer" step:

Here's the Edit view of the Update step:

Here's a run with the null values:

and some feature layer fields after being updated, showing 1 Jan 1970 and 0.00:

[AkshayHarshe]

@NigelCharmanPre-Prod Thanks for sharing this. I was able to reproduce this when tried using the function null, If I don't pass anything then it creates a null. I am having our developer look at this. If you must make your flow run, try and see if you can pass nothing when the input is null.

[NigelCharmanPre-Prod]

@AkshayHarshe I don't think it's possible to conditionally select which fields are updated in this step. The only way I can see would be to call different steps dependent on whether the fields are null. But since we have 5 fields that could be null, this would require 5! steps, which is unmanageable. I think we'll need to create a Notebook to modify the fields that have been written incorrectly.

Would you let me know when you have a date for a fix to be released, please?

[AlagiriVenkatachal · Accepted solution]

Hi @NigelCharmanPre-Prod,
We wanted to let you know that a fix was pushed out to address the issue that was reported about the treatment of null values. With this fix, null values will continue to be treated as null values.

Thanks,
Alagiri

[Pavel148]

Hi,
This issue should be fixed in production as of 2025/03/10 for ArcGIS and ArcGIS Enterprise connectors.

Expected behaviour is when a null or empty value is passed to date fields, the value will be null.
The same is expected of numeric and string fields.

Thanks for reporting it!

[NigelCharmanPre-Prod]

Thanks, I can confirm that the fix solves my problem 😀