Is there a way to make hibernate return an empty node for properties that have a null value?

For example

class Person {
Long id;
String firstName;
String lastName;
}

1,Bill,Salvucci
2,,Smith

Currently the xml document returned would look like:
<Person>
<id>1</id>
<firstName>Bill</firstName>
<lastName>Salvucci</lastName>
</Person>
<Person>
<id>2</id>
<lastName>Smith</lastName>
</Person>


I would like it to look like:
<Person>
<id>1</id>
<firstName>Bill</firstName>
<lastName>Salvucci</lastName>
</Person>
<Person>
<id>2</id>
<firstName/>
<lastName>Smith</lastName>
</Person>

hi

i dont think there is a way to make hibernate return an empty node for properties that have a null value.

but there is a work around

You can change your schema and set default value of the columns to empty string rather than null. In that case hibernate returns empty node when there is no data against a column.

That will only work for VARCHAR columns.

I'm suprised no else is asking for this. It makes the xsl much more complicated and less performant if the elements/attributes aren't returned for null values.