ElementAttribute "nip" field

[avlo]

@tcheeric hi eric, are you aware of nip value requirement/need/use by tags mentioned anywhere in the nostr spec? i couldn't find any requirement/mention there, potentially rendering its inclusion in ElementAttribute (and subsequent propagation into GenericTag and handling of null in GenericMessage/GenericTagDecoder) as superfluous and furthermore, systemic null nip use/abuse exists as a result.

if not necessary, it can cleanly be removed (as exemplified in this branch), along with a @Deprecated annotation on GenericTag methods:

@Deprecated
public static GenericTag create(String code, Integer nip, String... params)

@Deprecated
public static GenericTag create(String code, Integer nip, List<String> params)

with introduction of nip-less variants:

public static GenericTag create(String code, String... params)
public static GenericTag create(String code, List<String> params)

alternately, if reason/value to keep nip field in ElementAttribute/GenericTag, we might consider a default value (say, 1) rather than clumsily/superfluously accommodating null.

lmk what you think & no rush.

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specific details:

• nip field excluded & ignored in GenericTag
• null manually inserted for nip value into ElementAttribute upon creation (superfluous & bad!)
• null again manually passed as parameter into GenericTag creation (superfluous & bad!)

[tcheeric]

Hi Nick, this is not required and can safely be removed. (It was initially intended for tag/event/message validation but is now obsolete)

[avlo]

super. relevant changes have been merged into existing spring_boot-gradle-migration PR branch, with constructors and create() method signatures deprecation annotated, their revised implementations calling new nip-less (and null-safe) variants with both maven and gradle builds completing 100% unit and integration tests.