Answers.Body: <p>Someone requested it. They had a use case for it where they couldn’t simply prevent the rows from getting selected in the DB query with a conditional (which is still definitely the recommended way to go). The only reason I decided to add it was for the sake of defensive coding.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2014-12-03T16:02:13.757Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2014-12-03T16:02:13.757Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Brandon Kelly
Body: <p>In the 2.3 release notes, one item reads: </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>ElementsService is now forgiving of an element type whose populateElementModel() method doesn’t return an actual element model.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I'm curious what the use case is here — When would populateElementModel not return a BaseElementModel, and why would that be okay?</p>
  
Tags: <baseelementmodel>
Title: Why is ElementsService forgiving of an element type whose populateElementModel() method doesn’t return an actual element model
ThreadText: # Why is ElementsService forgiving of an element type whose populateElementModel() method doesn’t return an actual element model
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2014-12-03)
  
  In the 2.3 release notes, one item reads:
  
  > ElementsService is now forgiving of an element type whose populateElementModel() method doesn’t return an actual element model.
  
  I'm curious what the use case is here — When would populateElementModel not return a BaseElementModel, and why would that be okay?
  
  **Tags:** baseelementmodel
  
  
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  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2014-12-03. Score: 1
  
  Someone requested it. They had a use case for it where they couldn’t simply prevent the rows from getting selected in the DB query with a conditional (which is still definitely the recommended way to go). The only reason I decided to add it was for the sake of defensive coding.
  
  
  ---
  
  