cy.request: RequestBody type not aligned with RFC (e.g. boolean)

[PeterRistMHP]

Current behavior

I've stumbled on this problem while trying to send only a boolean in a PUT request.

Currently the type for RequestBody is typed as type RequestBody = string | object [1]. However this doesn't align with the current RFC 8259 for allowed values in JSON [2].

[1] https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/blob/develop/cli/types/cypress.d.ts#L10
[2] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8259#section-3

Desired behavior

All values defined in the RFC should be accepted as valid values for the body in a cy.request().

Test code to reproduce

cy.request({ method: "PUT", url: ANY_URL_HERE, body: true })

Cypress Version

v13.16.1

Node version

v20.10.0

Operating System

macOS 14.2

Debug Logs

No response

Other

No response

[jennifer-shehane]

@PeterRistMHP That's fun. We'd be open to a pull request to fix the types.

[PeterRistMHP]

Hi @jennifer-shehane,

I'm afraid it's not only a type issue. I've changed the type, but sending the request with body: true crashes cypress with the following stacktrace:

The "chunk" argument must be of type string or an instance of Buffer or Uint8Array. Received type boolean (true)
TypeError [ERR_INVALID_ARG_TYPE]: The "chunk" argument must be of type string or an instance of Buffer or Uint8Array. Received type boolean (true)
    at new NodeError (node:internal/errors:399:5)
    at write_ (node:_http_outgoing:884:11)
    at ClientRequest.write (node:_http_outgoing:849:15)
    at ee.write (<embedded>:2050:109573)
    at e (<embedded>:2050:96908)
    at Immediate.<anonymous> (<embedded>:2050:97414)
    at process.processImmediate (node:internal/timers:476:21)
The Test Runner unexpectedly exited via a exit event with signal SIGABRT

I haven't found the source of this exception yet.

[TheoAnastasiadis]

This is a problem with the @cypress/request-promise library. Indeed the JSON spec allows for boolean and null value literals so you should be able to use this as cy.request('POST', 'https://example.com', true).

My idea for a fix would be to

• change the driver so that it sets json = true in these cases.
• change the server to convert boolean and null value literals to string as specified in RFC 8259.
• fix the types of RequestOptions.

I can open a PR on this 😀

[cypress-bot]

Released in 13.7.0.

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