title: Talend- Empty string handling when parsing dates using tmap component
body: <p>I have a job that loads a CSV into a MySQL table.  The field I am paring to a date using the t-map component has empty strings for a few of the records.  When parsing the string to date, I need to convert those empty strings to the current date. I've tried this expression in the tmap component with no luck.  My field name is "Payroll_Pay_Date" Here is the expression:</p>
  
  <pre><code>row1.Payroll_Pay_Date equals("")?TalendDate.getCurrentDate():TalendDate.parseDate("MM/dd/yyyy",row1.Payroll_Pay_date)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I've tried several itterations of this. Actually, what I really want to is to have the empty string be replaced with the "current date - 7 days" but I figure I would start with the above.   Any advice would be much appreciated.</p>