Slack hands out bad json: "user error (when expecting a Int, encountered String instead)"

[angerman]

I tried to track down a strange issue when starting a bot, and found that the team prefs look like the following:

{
  "default_channels": [
    "..."
  ],
  "disable_builtin_loading": true,
  "emoji_only_admins": true,
  "loading_only_admins": true,
  "retention_type": "1",
  "retention_duration": 0,
  "group_retention_type": "1",
  "group_retention_duration": 0,
  "dm_retention_type": "1",
  "dm_retention_duration": 0,
  "msg_edit_window_mins": -1,
  "allow_message_deletion": true,
  "hide_referers": true,
  "display_real_names": false,
  "who_can_at_everyone": "regular",
  "who_can_at_channel": "ra",
  "warn_before_at_channel": "always",
  "who_can_create_channels": "regular",
  "who_can_archive_channels": "regular",
  "who_can_create_groups": "ra",
  "who_can_post_general": "ra",
  "who_can_kick_channels": "admin",
  "who_can_kick_groups": "regular",
  "require_at_for_mention": 0,
  "compliance_export_start": 0
}

See the "1" fields. Which obviously clash with the Int :(

[mpickering]

Thanks a lot for this report. When group_retention_type is not set then I get sent down a 0 as an integer. I will forward your tweet onto the API team at Slack.

[tonyd256]

@angerman I realize this is really old but I had the same issue and the fix was to toggle that setting in the admin setting for Slack. It should then start returning as the expected Int type. I went through Slack help and that's the resolution they gave me. They said they would investigate why it was a String in the first place but until that's fixed, this workaround was enough.