Offline always returns string values

[claudiobosticco]

SmartClient Version: SNAPSHOT_v13.1d_2024-09-15/AllModules Development Only (built 2024-09-15)
SmartClient Version: v13.0p_2024-09-14/AllModules Development Only (built 2024-09-14)

Hello, I just noticed that, after storing a number or boolean value with Offline api, when retrieving those values they became strings. Is it expected?

You may try with this test case:

isc.Offline.put("aNumber", 5);
isc.Offline.put("aBoolean", true);

let aNumber = isc.Offline.get("aNumber");
let aBoolean = isc.Offline.get("aBoolean");

isc.say("aNumber is a Number? " + isc.isA.Number(aNumber) + "<br>or is a String? " + isc.isA.String(aNumber)
    + "<br>aBoolean is a Boolean? " + isc.isA.Boolean(aBoolean))

[Isomorphic]

Yes, all localStorage is effectively String storage, so you need to have a mechanism of retaining type if type is important. Typically, this is done by encoding to JSON or XML.

If you use our JSONEncoder, it can also round-trip Dates and keep the distinction between a date, datetime or time value.

[claudiobosticco]

thanks for the clarification, it's not actually a problem, it's just that the doc says "only primitive values - Strings, numbers and booleans - can be stored", so at first I thought that for those the type would be retained. Maybe a note could be beneficial.

[Isomorphic]

Yes, a clarifying note is already being added to the documentation, as it does sound as if the type would be round-tripped, whereas what it actually meant was that you can't directly store an Object without serializing it.

[Isomorphic]

As of tomorrow, the docs are updated with some clarifications, if you want to take a look. Thanks for pointing this out!

[claudiobosticco]

Now there is no risk of misunderstanding in the documentation, thanks!