Boolean in a URI query?

Question

What is the preferred way to specify boolean value in the query part of URI? A normal query string looks like

a=foo&b=bar 

Say I have a parameter "c" with boolean value, should I state

a=foo&b=bar&c=1 

Or

a=foo&b=bar&c=True 

Or

a=foo&b=bar&c=true 

I checked the query component section of RFC 2396 and it does not specify how to express a boolean parameter. So what I want to know is what is the common (or reasonable) way to do it?

Answer 1

It completely depends on the way you read the query string. All of these that you ask for are valid.

Answer 2

In node with an express server, you can add a boolean parser middleware like express-query-boolean.

var boolParser = require('express-query-boolean');  // [...]   app.use(bodyParser.json()); app.use(boolParser()); 

Without

// ?a=true&b[c]=false  console.log(req.query); // => { a: 'true', b: { c: 'false' } }  

With

// ?a=true&b[c]=false  console.log(req.query); // => { a: true, b: { c: false } }