Pubstwo 1000

I chose to deal with some null exceptions by initializing an empty object. Any unintended consequences possible here?
I'm not sure we have to worry about this. When retrieving values from the server, we first initialize a skeleton Publication object on the client with default values like ```publicationType:{ id:'' }```. When a publication object comes back from the server, we override the default values in the skeleton object iff they are present on the response object, otherwise the values are left as default. 

Because we load the objects this way, the only way to get 'cannot access "id" of undefined/null'-style errors is if the server is returning null. Is it worth being that defensive? I'd prefer a clear breaking error if the server breaks its contract with the client. Another possible error is if the server starts returning the id value instead of an {id: '42'} object. As written, there is no protection against that kind of error. If we want to be defensive about the first class of error, shouldn't we be about the second as well?