can't get decoded tags

[daniel-deepmedia]

Hi, I tried to run the code below:

const transaction = await arweave.transactions.get(txid);
const tags = transaction.get('tags', {'decode': true, 'string':true}) as Object as Tag[]

but I run into the error:

TypeError: b64UrlString.replace is not a function
    at b64UrlDecode (/Users/...../node_modules/arweave/node/lib/utils.js:81:33)

while this works, but gives me the tags encoded:

const transaction = await arweave.transactions.get(txid);
const tags = transaction.get('tags') as Object as Tag[]

which is not what I want, so I had to do it this way:

import { b64UrlToString } from 'arweave/node/lib/utils.js'
const transaction = await arweave.transactions.get(txid);
const tags = (transaction.get('tags') as Object as Tag[]).map((tag: Tag) => {
    return {'name': b64UrlToString(tag.name), 'value': b64UrlToString(tag.value)}
})

Edit: I npm installed version: "arweave": "^1.13.5"

[rosmcmahon]

Yeah, it seems to have always been this way (I checked back through releases to 1.9 anyhow)
Ref: https://github.com/ArweaveTeam/arweave-js#decode-tags-from-transactions
So what you are doing above is sort of correct.

These need to be looked into though:

1. Typescript is giving the return type of tags as string.
2. The error isn't too helpful either, it's trying to perform string functions on an array

[rosmcmahon]

Interesting. 1. above cannot be fixed without breaking compatibility badly.

After next patch get will throw an error if an array is detected, and decode or string are defined.

FYI, i think the preferred usage should be:

const transaction = await arweave.transactions.get(txid);
const tags = transaction['tags'] // correct type returned

this delivers type information correctly. i will update README.md to reflect this anyhow.