How to present the nullable primitive type int in Java?

Question

I am designing an entity class which has a field named \"documentYear\", which might have unsigned integer values such as 1999, 2006, etc. Meanwhile, this field might also b

Answer 1

You're going to have to either ditch the primitive type or use some arbitrary int value as your "invalid year".

A negative value is actually a good choice since there is little chance of having a valid year that would cause an integer overflow and there is no valid negative year.