TL;DR Null Object pattern for files.

• Setup
• Usage
• Null Object Pattern
• Attributions

This project will create an empty file of a type requested. If possible, that file will be the smallest valid file for that type. For example, an empty jpg will be a 1x1 pixel jpg.

From pypi:

pip install empty-files

This code:

from empty_files.empty_files import create_empty_file
create_empty_file("temp/empty.jpg")

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will create the following image

Issue: null/None causes extra checks in order to avoid errors.

Solution: return an empty version of the object, so methods can be used normally.

Example: if last_name returns "" instead of None,
we can write:

name_length = len(person.last_name())

instead of :

name_length = 0
if (person.last_name())
 name_length = len(person.last_name()) 

The empty files are taken from Simon Cropp's Empty Files.