How to Deserialize null response in js-data

Question

The find method in js-data-http appears to have a special case where if item is falsey then it will reject the promise, otherwise it returns item. My problem is that some falsey values (0, null, '') are valid responses from my API.

For example if I ask for a relation that hasn't been set then the API responds with data null wrapped in a jsonapi envelope. This follows the jsonapi spec for fetching empty relationships:

{
  "links": {
    "self": "/articles/1/relationships/author",
    "related": "/articles/1/author"
  },
  "data": null
}

I'm using the js-data-jsonapi library to help js-data and jsonapi get along. In that library the DeSerializer unwraps the jsonapi envelop. At that point js-data is back in charge and the unwrapped data null is the value for item in the find promise resolve method which causes js-data-http to reject the promise.

Right now I'm taking advantage of a special case in js-data-jsonapi to deserialize null data as an array because in JS Arrays are truthy. But then I must special case the detection for hasOne relations where now an empty array must be re-converted into null.

This seems like an overly complicated way of handling things, is there a better way that I am missing?

My setup uses:

"angular": "1.5.8",
"js-data": "2.9.0",
"js-data-angular": "3.2.1",
"js-data-jsonapi": "0.0.0-alpha.21",