Returning {} instead of null when no data at path

[wyattisimo]

I'm using this to mock Firebase for tests in a Ruby app. Certain tests are failing due to firebase-server returning an empty object instead of null when no data exists at a given path.

If I target a real Firebase project:

fb.get('/bogus/path') # make a RESTful GET request to a nonexistent path in Firebase
#=> nil

If I target the locally running firebase-server:

fb.get('/bogus/path') # make a RESTful GET request to a nonexistent path in Firebase
#=> {}

It would seem this is a result of the following line:

firebase-server/lib/http-server.ts

Line 17 in 6e0ebc7

writeResponse(response, snapshot.val() || {});

Is this deliberate? Am I missing something, or should that code be failing over to null instead of {}?