Update date field with null value using JS remoting?

Question

With the Rest Toolkit, creating or updating an optional date field with an empty string results in an Invalid date error. Using null instead results in another error: Argument 1 cannot be null.

How can you make the field null?

client.update('Transaction__c', 'a0Ni0000000H1kWCHA', {Name: "1078", Date__c: "2013-03-14", Due_Date__c: ""}, function(){})

Answer 1

It sounds like this could be a limitation of the toolkit. If the remoting is being done in a VF page you could instead call a method your own apex method which could look for a specific date such as 01-01-1900 and set it to null when needed.

If you're outside of the platform (sounds like you might be) and really need this functionality then you could use a similar approach, set a specific date that wouldn't be used otherwise (01/01/1900) and then use a trigger to set that field to null.

Answer 2

Convert the empty string to null in RemoteTKController.cls by changing

obj.put(key, Date.valueOf(svalue));

to

obj.put(key, svalue == '' ? null : Date.valueOf(svalue));