How to unmarshall both 0 and false as bool from JSON

Question

Currently am mapping the output of a service that, lets say, liberally interchanges 0 and false (and 1 and true) for its boolean types. Is there a way to use a more permissive parser for the built in encoding/json unmarshal function? I've tried adding ,string to the json tags to no avail.

An example of what I'd want:

type MyType struct {
    AsBoolean bool `json:"field1"`
    AlsoBoolean bool `json:"field2"`
}

then, given input json:

{
    "field1" : true,
    "field2" : 1
}

the resulting struct would be:

obj := MyType{}
json_err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(input_json), &obj)
fmt.Printf("%v\n", obj.AsBoolean) //"true"
fmt.Printf("%v\n", obj.AlsoBoolean) //"true"

Answer 1

This is my take on it. In case you need something to deal with a few extra cases. Add more as needed.

// so you know what's needed.
import (
    "encoding/json"
    "strconv"
    "strings"
)

// NumBool provides a container and unmarshalling for fields that may be
// boolean or numbrs in the WebUI API.
type NumBool struct {
    Val bool
    Num float64
}

// UnmarshalJSON parses fields that may be numbers or booleans.
func (f *NumBool) UnmarshalJSON(b []byte) (err error) {
    switch str := strings.ToLower(strings.Trim(string(b), `"`)); str {
    case "true":
        f.Val = true
    case "false":
        f.Val = false
    default:
        f.Num, err = strconv.ParseFloat(str, 64)
        if f.Num > 0 {
            f.Val = true
        }
    }
    return err
}

See it in playground.

I've also been known to something like this:

// FlexBool provides a container and unmarshalling for fields that may be
// boolean or strings in the Unifi API.
type FlexBool struct {
    Val bool
    Txt string
}

// UnmarshalJSON method converts armed/disarmed, yes/no, active/inactive or 0/1 to true/false.
// Really it converts ready, ok, up, t, armed, yes, active, enabled, 1, true to true. Anything else is false.
func (f *FlexBool) UnmarshalJSON(b []byte) error {
    if f.Txt = strings.Trim(string(b), `"`); f.Txt == "" {
        f.Txt = "false"
    }
    f.Val = f.Txt == "1" || strings.EqualFold(f.Txt, "true") || strings.EqualFold(f.Txt, "yes") ||
        strings.EqualFold(f.Txt, "t") || strings.EqualFold(f.Txt, "armed") || strings.EqualFold(f.Txt, "active") ||
        strings.EqualFold(f.Txt, "enabled") || strings.EqualFold(f.Txt, "ready") || strings.EqualFold(f.Txt, "up") ||
        strings.EqualFold(f.Txt, "ok")
    return nil
}

And if you want to go real small:

// Bool allows 0/1 and "0"/"1" and "true"/"false" (strings) to also become boolean.
type Bool bool

func (bit *Bool) UnmarshalJSON(b []byte) error {
    // txt := string(b) // original, no strings.
    txt := string(bytes.Trim(b, `"`))
    *bit = Bool(txt == "1" || txt == "true")
    return nil
}

See this one in playground: bool/int/string. The old version: playground: bool/int.

Answer 2

Thank you Will Charzuck for the answer, however, it did not work for me unless I used a pointer method receiver, and set the value of the pointer in the function body.

type ConvertibleBoolean bool

func (bit *ConvertibleBoolean) UnmarshalJSON(data []byte) error {
    asString := string(data)
    if asString == "1" || asString == "true" {
        *bit = true
    } else if asString == "0" || asString == "false" {
        *bit = false
    } else {
        return errors.New(fmt.Sprintf("Boolean unmarshal error: invalid input %s", asString))
    }
    return nil
}

Answer 3

Ended up using a special "boolean" type, and where I was using a normal bool, swapped for this:

type ConvertibleBoolean bool

func (bit ConvertibleBoolean) UnmarshalJSON(data []byte) error {
    asString := string(data)
    if asString == "1" || asString == "true" {
        bit = true
    } else if asString == "0" || asString == "false" {
        bit = false
    } else {
        return errors.New(fmt.Sprintf("Boolean unmarshal error: invalid input %s", asString))
    }
    return nil
}