Use NVL with string in Django?

On a Django app, I’m using cx_Oracle to display a roster of sports players:

def get_players(self, sport_code='', term=0):
"""

:rtype: object
"""
con = cx_Oracle.Connection(settings.BANNER_CONNECTION_URL)
cursor = con.cursor()
query = 'select PREF_NAME, CLASS, ELIGIBLE_HOURS, CHECKED_IN, SEASONS_USED, MAJR1, NVL(MINR1, Null), CA_EMAIL, ID from swvsprt_web where ACTC = '%s' AND term = '%s' ORDER BY PREF_NAME' % (
    sport_code, term)
cursor.execute(query)
players = cursor.fetchall()
cursor.close()
con.close()
return players

I want minor to just be blank if they don’t have a minor

NVL(MINR1, Null)

But I can’t quite get NVL to behave. “Null” makes it print the word “None.” If I do

NVL(MINR1, 0)

it will display a 0, but if I try any of the following, they crash the site with a 500 error:

NVL(MINR1, )

NVL(MINR1, '')

NVL(MINR1, "")

Can we use NVL to make it show null values as just nothing?

Answer

In Python, the ‘null’ object is the singleton None

If you want to display something else, you should post-process the data, and replace values of None in that field with an empty string.

A better alternative might be to just leave the values of None as is in your backend representation. This is more representative of not having a minor than an empty string.

Then, on your frontend template, you can check for a null value, and display an empty string if MINR1 is None.

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Answer