Cassandra Hector: how to insert null as a column value?

Question

An often use-case with Cassandra is storing the data in the column names of the dynamically created column family. In this situation the row values themselves are not needed, and a usual practice is to store nulls there. However, when dealing with Hector, it seems like there is no way to insert null value, because Hector HColumnImpl does an explicit null-check in the column's constructor:

 public HColumnImpl(N name, V value, long clock, Serializer<N> nameSerializer,
       Serializer<V> valueSerializer) {
        this(nameSerializer, valueSerializer);
        notNull(name, "name is null");
        notNull(value, "value is null");

        this.column = new Column(nameSerializer.toByteBuffer(name));
        this.column.setValue(valueSerializer.toByteBuffer(value));
        this.column.setTimestamp(clock);
      }

Are there any ways to insert nulls via Hector? If not, what is the best practice in the situation when you don't care about column values and need only their names?

Answer 1

Try using an empty byte[], i.e. new byte[0];