JSON output type returns all values as a string

[mooreds]

The JSON output type (_output=application/json) returns everything as a string.

That makes sense for the XML output type, when everything is an attribute. But JSON supports number and boolean as well as string, so if a column is either of those, it should be output in that form.

[restsql]

Right you are Sir. We could definitely drop the double quotes from boolean and numeric data types. That would avoid requiring consumers having to cast.

[mooreds]

Right. One issue I can see is that it wouldn't be backward compatible, but since JSON was only added recently, I'm not sure how big a problem that is. I guess you could document it, or add some kind of switch to default it back.

The relevant section of code looks to be in restsql/src/org/restsql/core/impl/JsonResponseSerializer.java in appendNameValuePair. Changing

string.append(JsonUtil.quote(value.toString()));

to

if (value instanceof Number) {
string.append(value);
} else {
string.append(JsonUtil.quote(value.toString()));
}

Not quite sure how to handle booleans, though.