How can I convert a JTextField that's returning null to a different string value?

[Jerick]

I have a JTextField that I'm not always passing a value to, but it causes an exception to be thrown when the program runs if the person hasn't entered anything into the JTextField. I have some code below that I'm trying to convert a null response into a different String value. Why isn't it assigning stringInput as a String of "0"?

            String stringInput = " ";
            stringInput = dinnerTextField.getText();
            if (stringInput == null)
               stringInput = "0";

[r035198x]

Maybe stringInput is the empty string "" rather than null.
To handle that you could use

if(stringInput == null || stringInput.trim().equals("")) {