I am working with a database that handles null values very poorly. Instead of using nullable strings, I want to use a fixed, very rare value (essentially a UUID) as a placeholder for null.

My goal is to use Optional instead of String for fields in Java, and whenever I bind an Optional.empty() to an INSERT INTO statement, I want jOOQ to automatically convert this to my UUID that I use as a flag for an empty optional. When the optional has a value, I want jOOQ to use the provided value as usual.

I tried setting up a converter, but it only seems to work during SELECT operations and not during the insertion phase. I suspect I might be missing something.

Here is what I have so far:

package com.res.jooq.neo4j;

public class Neo4jOptionalUtils {

    public static final String EMPTY_STRING = "empty-string-optional-ac4ea8cd-9128-4ee3-bb2c-48a1c239ffd2";

    private Neo4jOptionalUtils() {
        // private constructor to hide the implicit public one
    }

    public static String optional(String value) {
        return value == null ? EMPTY_STRING : value;
    }

    public static String fromOptional(String optional) {
        return EMPTY_STRING.equals(optional) ? null : optional;
    }
}

I am using this utility class to convert null values to my fixed UUID and vice versa.

How can I configure jOOQ to apply this conversion automatically during INSERT operations?

Is there a way to ensure that both SELECT and INSERT operations respect this conversion logic without manually converting each value?