Acessing optional serialized fields yields `rest_framework.fields.empty`.

[wkrueger]

@dataclass
class SomeClass:
    maybeDog: Optional[Dog]

instance = getInst() # lets say getInst() serializes an input with that dataclass, gets value through validated_data
if instance.maybeDog:  # this is always truthy, because when maybeDog is absent its value is acessed as field.empty
    print('bark')

[oxan]

See this note in the changelog. Use save() if you want the default field value.

[oxan]

This issue actually made me think of a way to avoid exposing the empty sentinel, which I implemented in f3fff47.