I have a table with numerous nullable fields but when using the Java api to get the data from a row I've found that instead of simply getting null instead of a string the code throws an exception.

As users are likely to want to map all results from a query regardless of whether the field was null or not it would be better if the methods for getting a String or Long handled null gracefully. Or at least provide an alternative method where the caller can provide a default value or null if the fields value is null.

Fortunately as I'm using Kotlin I can work around this for now with an extension function on FieldValueList:

fun FieldValueList.getNullable(name: String): FieldValue? = if (this.get(name).isNull) null else this.get(name)

which in turn means I can simply do row.getNullable("my_nullable_column")?.stringValue when mapping the FieldValueList to an object.

If getStringValue() had on overloaded method that takes an arg that's used as a default I could have done something like:

row.get("my_nullable_column").getStringValue(null)

which would be convenient. Also this could be added without breaking the existing API.