Meme transcription:

Panel 1: Bilbo Baggins ponders, “After all… why should I care about the difference between int and String?

Panel 2: Bilbo Baggins is revealed to be an API developer. He continues, “JSON is always String, anyways…”

  • Aux@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    4 months ago

    What that means is that you cannot rely on numbers in JSON. Just use strings.

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      4 months ago

      Unless you’re dealing with some insanely flexible schema, you should be able to know what kind of number (int, double, and so on) a field should contain when deserializing a number field in JSON. Using a string does not provide any benefits here unless there’s some big in your deserialzation process.

      • Aux@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        What’s the point of your schema if the receiving end is JavaScript, for example? You can convert a string to BigNumber, but you’ll get wrong data if you’re sending a number.

        • JackbyDev@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          4 months ago

          I’m not following your point so I think I might be misunderstanding it. If the types of numbers you want to express are literally incapable of being expressed using JSON numbers then yes, you should absolutely use string (or maybe even an object of multiple fields).

          • lad@programming.dev
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            4 months ago

            The point is that everything is expressable as JSON numbers, it’s when those numbers are read by JS there’s an issue

                  • lad@programming.dev
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    4 months ago

                    I disagree a bit in that the schema often doesn’t specify limits and operates in JSON standard’s terms, it will say that you should get/send a number, but will not usually say at what point will it break.

                    This is the opposite of what C language does, being so specific that it is not even turing complete (in a theoretical sense, it is practically)

          • Aux@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            4 months ago

            Because no one is using JSON.parse directly. Do you guys even code?

            • bleistift2@sopuli.xyzOP
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              4 months ago

              It’s neither JSON’s nor JavaScript’s fault that you don’t want to make a simple function call to properly deserialize the data.