Hello boards,

From last few days i ran into an issue, at start i thought its a issue with my application but later on realized its a behaviour of Integer field while using standard controller.

The example of what i'm trying to do is to display the fields in pageblocktable on click of a button using standard controller and extension.

Everything is working smoothly but only problem is with integer fields, even tough they contain null value it displays 0 in UI.

Below is small demo of the what i found:

Page:

<apex:page standardController="Account" extensions="stdAccCtrl">
<apex:form id="theForm">
<apex:pagemessages id="info"/>
<apex:inputText value="{!Account.NumberOfEmployees}"/>
<apex:commandButton action="{!Check}" value="Save" rerender="theForm"/>
</apex:form>
</apex:page>

 Extension:

public class stdAccCtrl {
    public Account objAccount {get;set;}
    public stdAccCtrl(ApexPages.StandardController controller){
        objAccount = (Account) controller.getRecord();
        ApexPages.addMessage(new ApexPages.message(ApexPages.severity.INFO,'Employees : '+String.valueOf(objAccount.NumberOfEmployees)));
    }
    public void Check(){
        ApexPages.addMessage(new ApexPages.message(ApexPages.severity.INFO,'Employees : '+String.valueOf(objAccount.NumberOfEmployees)));
    }
}

 I know its displaying 0 as a default for integer field but would like to know the reason in depth.

I would be happy is some one is able to shed some light on it.