正确处理gRPC类型到SQL ORM

Question

I'm implementing a gRPC server and using an ORM called Boiler for Go. I've gotten to a point where I've built all my models and protos and now I'm handling specific type issues.

Within my protobuf files I've declared most types as strings. However my ORM treats (due to how it interfaces with Postgres) strings as null.String in it's models. Hence when I attempt something like so I get an error:

user := &models.User{
    FirstName:   req.FirstName,
    LastName:    req.LastName,
    Email:       req.Email,
    Gender:      req.Gender,
    PhoneNumber: req.PhoneNumber,
}

The error: services/users.go:46:3: cannot use req.FirstName (type string) as type null.String in field value

The question is what would be the most appropriate way of handling this situation. I could: generate a new struct (which I'm already using for data validation) and cast them into null.String or I suppose I could attempt to force the casting somehow?

The question then becomes if a user doesn't supply a value in the API and the validation process allows it, how would that handle the non-existing record?

Edit: Seems like SQLBoiler developers have a package for handling nulls separately. ie. null.StringFrom(), null.Int15From etc. which I'd in essence wrap all my fields with as such:

user := &models.User{
    FirstName:        null.StringFrom(req.FirstName),
    LastName:         null.StringFrom(req.LastName),
    Email:            null.StringFrom(req.Email),
    Password:         string(password_hash),
    Role:             "BASIC_USER",
    Status:           "ACTIVE",
    Gender:           null.Int16From(req.Gender),
    PhoneNumber:      null.StringFrom(req.PhoneNumber),
    VerificationCode: null.StringFrom(code.String()),
}

Feels kind of dirty but I don't see any other options. Suggestions/opinions anyone?