Empty '' text is considered null? Why?

If I use the following JSON input, Xano considers the name [text] field to be null. Why?

{
'id': 1,
'name': ''
}

In other programming languages, I can set a variable to be = '', and this is different than null.

I'm attempting to keep or edit the value of a text db field. If the user clears the data on the front end, the input field will be ''. I need to check the input for null value, and if it's null, then keep the current value in the db.

first_ifnotNull does the same thing.