How to pass boolean variable of false in a URL

Benjen picture Benjen · Apr 20, 2015 · Viewed 44.9k times · Source

I cannot work out how to pass a variable with a boolean value of false through a URL string. What is the correct method?

  • domain/page?test=false
  • domain/page?test=
  • domain/page?test=0

Answer

Jordan Running picture Jordan Running · Apr 20, 2015

URLs are strings and all values in a URL are strings. When you see i=0 in a URL, 0 is a string. When you see b=true, true is a string. When you see s=, the value is an empty string.

For those strings to take on another meaning—the integer 0 or the Boolean true, say—the server-side program must be told how to interpret them. Often web frameworks will make intelligent guesses as to the right type, or sometimes a type is declared explicitly in a model.

How you'll do it depends entirely on what server-side language and what framework, if any, you're using.