@xabbuh Can you finish this one?

I think we need to make a decision first how we see null values should be handled. IMO comparing null with greater or less than operators doesn't make any sense.

@xabbuh I agree that comparing null with these operators do not make sense.

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@symfony/mergers How do we proceed here? Does a comparison with null always lead to a true or a false result? Throwing an exception would be logical, but isn't possible without breaking backwards compatibility.

How do we proceed here? Does a comparison with null always lead to a true or a false result? Throwing an exception would be logical, but isn't possible without breaking backwards compatibility.

To me null values should be ignored. If any is encountered, we should skip the comparison as it makes no sense.
Throwing is not required if the property is allowed to be null. If it isn't, the proper @NotNull constraint should have been set in the first place.

Throwing is not required if the property is allowed to be null. If it isn't, the proper @NotNull constraint should have been set in the first place.

Well, this is not about the property the constraint is attached too. But if you compare it to another property that one can be null too.

But to make it a bit more clear what I mean: My reasoning would be that a null value should never raise a validation constraint and the comparison constraints should reflect that.

Just my two cents because I originally raised the issue (#29831).

I'd assume that, if the value returned by propertyPath is null, the validator will just ignore the comparison. Just as the validator ignores the comparison if the owning side value (that's where the constraint is attached to) is null.

• [Validator ]AbstractComparisonValidator propertyPath and NULL  #29831 (comment)

But this may not be correct when dealing with the Equal/NotEqual/IdenticalTo/NotIdenticalTo as pointed out by @xabbuh in #29831 (comment).

So I think to address this correctly, there needs to be a different handling for the equal/not-equal constraints. But for the less-than/greater-than (-equals) constraints a comparison with null should be ignored.

@sgehrig Yes, that pretty much sums up my thoughts.

Status: Needs Review

ping @symfony/mergers