Pass Boolean Values from Ajax to PHP - php

Question

I've read a tonne of questions on the subject but none of them seam to solve my particular issue – I guess there's something wrong with the way I've formatted my array of objects in JS. Here's my Ajax function:
var marketing_prefs = [];
$('#save-marketing-prefs input').each(function() {
var tmp_array = {};
tmp_array['marketing_permission_id'] = $(this).val();
if ($(this).prop('checked')) {
tmp_array['enabled'] = 1;
} else {
tmp_array['enabled'] = 0;
}
marketing_prefs.push(tmp_array);
})
console.log(marketing_prefs);
$.ajax({
dataType: 'json',
type: 'POST',
url: ajax_object.ajaxurl,
data: {
action: 'acrew_save_mc_marketing_prefs',
marketing_prefs: marketing_prefs
},
success: function(response) {
console.log('#####', response);
},
error: function(response) {
console.error('!!!!!', response);
}
});
What I'm doing is looping through a simple form with three checkboxes and creating an array of objects which will then go off to Mailchimp. My data arrives intact but the problem is that my boolean values come over to PHP as strings. I've switched from using true and false which was coming over as "true" and "false", to using 1 an 0 but those come over as strings too.
I suppose I could loop through the data and build a new array in PHP but the data is so close to being correct when it arrives that it seems like it must be unnecessary.
How can I get my data over as non-strings?

Answer 1

POST data is sent as simple name=value pairs, there's no syntax to specify datatypes, and everything is parsed as strings.
You can call intval($_POST['marketing_prefs'][$i]['enabled']) to convert it to an integer.
Another option is to convert the marketing_prefs array to JSON.
$.ajax({
dataType: 'json',
type: 'POST',
url: ajax_object.ajaxurl,
data: {
action: 'acrew_save_mc_marketing_prefs',
marketing_prefs: JSON.stringify(marketing_prefs)
},
success: function(response) {
console.log('#####', response);
},
error: function(response) {
console.error('!!!!!', response);
}
});
Then in the PHP you can do:
$marketing_prefs = json_decode($_POST['marketing_prefs'], true);

Answer 2

Since, as Barmar stated, GET/POST can't specify data types (that's a rant in and of itself), one way would t be to cast it.
Very rough example:
var_dump((bool) <variable>);
The issue is if it's anything but 'true', 'empty' or I believe 0 it will return true. I'm in a hurry else I'd flush it out for you better.