Message-ID: <gh-pgjdbc-pgjdbc-3798@github.com>
From: "pdewacht (@pdewacht)" <noreply+pdewacht@github.com>
To: "pgjdbc/pgjdbc" <noreply+pgjdbc-pgjdbc@github.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2025 15:23:26 +0000
Subject: [pgjdbc/pgjdbc] issue #3798: getNotifications() behavior does not match documentation
List-Id: <gh-pgjdbc-pgjdbc.github.com>
X-GitHub-Author-Id: 223495
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X-GitHub-Issue: 3798
X-GitHub-Repo: pgjdbc/pgjdbc
X-GitHub-State: closed
X-GitHub-Type: issue
X-GitHub-Url: https://github.com/pgjdbc/pgjdbc/issues/3798
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The two variants of the `PGNotification.getNotifications()` method are documented to return null if there are no notifications: https://github.com/pgjdbc/pgjdbc/blob/a3be9d5ec7efe18e88e44f1637c459eb2bb4cc15/pgjdbc/src/main/java/org/postgresql/PGConnection.java#L54-L76

In fact they return an empty array. 

It seems the code to implement the 'return null' behavior was unintentionally removed in [529e5dc3a](https://github.com/pgjdbc/pgjdbc/commit/529e5dc3a8f071ad4946daf3bde1422c21a99524#diff-8ee30bec696495ec5763a3e1c1b216776efc124729f72e18dbaa35064af0aef0R1109).


Since this has been broken for a while, it might be better to just update the documentation to match the current behavior.

**Driver Version?** 

42.7.7

**To Reproduce**

```
import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.DriverManager;
import java.util.Properties;
import org.postgresql.PGConnection;

public class TestGetNotificationsNullResult {
    public static void main(String []args) throws Exception {
        String url = "jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/test";
        Properties props = new Properties();
        props.setProperty("user", "test");
        props.setProperty("password", "test");
        try (Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(url, props)) {
            var notifications = conn.unwrap(PGConnection.class).getNotifications();
            System.out.println("Expecting null: " + notifications);
        }
    }
}

```