req.params.number is string in expressjs?

Question

I am writing expressjs app. is req.params.anything always string and not number suppose if I pass a number for user_id it's typeof is always string.

app.get('user/:user_id', function(req, res){
  console.log(typeof req.params.user_id);
});

GET user/21

this logs string.

So is it always type string for req.params.x?

Answer 1

Yes, all params will be strings.

This is extracted from the expressjs route.js:

var val = 'string' == typeof m[i]
  ? decodeURIComponent(m[i])
  : m[i];

So the val will always be a string, since the result of decodeURIComponent is always a string, while m is the result of a RegExp.exec() which returns an array of matched strings, so it's also safe to assume that m[i] will be a string.