Velocity nulls and empty strings

Question

In velocity I have a variable which its value is null. I don\'t want to display anything in that case.

Currently the template engine translates \"\" to

Answer 1

Another alternative is to modify your if statement per Checking for Null (thanks for the link @xavi-lópez):

Approach 2: Use the fact that null is evaluated as an empty string in quiet references. (cf. http://velocity.apache.org/engine/devel/user-guide.html#quietreferencenotation)

So, your code would be:

#set ( $a = "")
#if ("$a" != "") 
   assert("never prints a neither gets here: " + $a)
#end