Inserting NULL values in qb

I can highly recommend the qb library for all kind of database manipulations, for querying and data definitions. Qb hides a lot of complexities for database actions, and abstracts away differences between database engines.

Although very powerful, some options are really well hidden in the documentation or the source code. Recently I wanted to update a database table with null values. The normal syntax for updating values in a database table is:

query.from( "users" )
    .update( {
        "email" = "foo",
        "name" = "bar"
    } );

If you have more complex requirements like inserting date values in the correct formats, you can specify query param options, e.g

query.from( "users" )
    .update( {
        "email" = "foo",
        "name" = "bar",
        "updatedDate" = { value = now(), cfsqltype = "CF_SQL_TIMESTAMP" }
    } );

This query param syntax comes in handy when inserting NULL values. As we all know older versions of Adobe Coldfusion and Lucee can’t handle null values very well:

query.from("user")
		.whereId( 10 )
		.update( {
			manager_FK = { value = "", null=true },
		} )

If you are using Lucee with full Null support you can leave out the null parameter, e.g

query.from("user")
		.whereId( 10 )
		.update( {
			manager_FK = { value = null },
		} )