Blank char/text fields

[anonymous]

The documentation does a good job of pointing out that blank should be used for text/char fields instead of null. What wasn't totally clear is that for non-character based fields (e.g. Integer) you have to use blank=True for the validator to allow the field to be empty (e.g. when creating a new instance in Admin). Also, I would assume in this situation it substitutes NULL instead of an empty string, making it different from the char/text field case. Figured it'd be worth a mention.

The particular portion of the documentation can be found ​here:

"Note that empty string values will always get stored as empty strings, not as NULL — so use null=True for non-string fields such as integers, booleans and dates.

Avoid using null on string-based fields such as CharField and TextField unless you have an excellent reason. If a string-based field has null=True, that means it has two possible values for “no data”: NULL, and the empty string. In most cases, it’s redundant to have two possible values for “no data;” Django convention is to use the empty string, not NULL."

[Chris Beaven]

Documentation clarification

[Chris Beaven]

This is an FAQ, even with the current documentation in blank. Can't hurt to clarify it in null too.

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

(In [5351]) Fixed #4351 -- Attempted to make it easier for readers to see the difference
between null and blank if they are reading from top to bottom.