issues with 'edit_count' field

Question

Update

other than the nullable issue, which is under review, the rest of this question is based on a mistake I made reading the nesting depth of the json result.

Disregard. Deletion is considered.

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regarding the 'edit_count' field found on nested answers and comments.

1. is not actually returned in any results (that I have seen).

   The rest of the issues assume that it will be returned

2. it is documented only on some nested answer collections and not on others, and not the primary route for the type
3. questions have no edit_count field, nested or otherwise
4. it is optional.

Assuming that this field will actually be populated in the future, it would be helpful if it was implemented consistently and if it was not optional. A count field does not typically lend itself to being nullable; either there have been edits or there have not.

Introducing ambiguity to an integer value requires enough client side code as to make the field impractical to use.

Answer 1

You're misreading the docs, edit_count present on comments which are sometimes returned with answers. It is not present on the "answer" itself.

The null-ability of edit_count is already on the list for "review in a subsequent version," but will not be changed in v1 for obvious backwards compatibility reasons.