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
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    4 months ago

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

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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      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
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        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.

          • Aux@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

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

            • bleistift2@sopuli.xyzOP
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              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.

        • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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          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
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            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
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                    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)