rest/datatypes

Datatypes in HTML

One of the challenges of using HTML as a data transport is that everything, by default, is a string. This page explores ways to use microformats -- specifically, class names -- to encode data type information, e.g., for use with xoxo and rest/ahah, in order to allow lossless import/export from various languages.

Examples

These are the primary datatypes in a range of different languages and formats. Note that we are only concerned with "primitive" datatypes (loosely defined), as structured datatypes (list/array, hash/dictionary) are handled by xoxo.

Datatype comparison table

Language/format	string	float	integer	boolean	data	date/time	null
XML Schema	string	float, double	decimal, integer, etc.	boolean	hexBinary, base64Binary	duration, dateTime, date, time	nil
XML-RPC	string	double	i4, int	boolean	base64	dateTime.iso8601	nil
Mac OS X plists	string	real	integer	true, false	data	date	nil
JSON (JavaScript)	string	number	number	true, false	N/A	Date	nil
YAML tags	str	int	float	bool	null (base 64)	N/A	null
SQL (JDBC)	char,varchar	float, double, real	decimal, numeric	bit	binary	date, time, timestamp	?
C	char*	float, double	int, long, short	byte	void*	N/A	(void*)0
Java	char, String	float, double	int, long, short, byte	boolean	N/A	util.Date	?
PHP	string	float (double)	integer	boolean	array	N/A	NULL
Perl	array	scalar	scalar	scalar	array	N/A
Python	str	float, complex	int, long	bool	binascii, base64	time,datetime
Ruby + lib	String	Float	Fixnum, Bignum	TrueClass,FalseClass	?	Date

Proposals

• TBD

References

• Datatypes in Wikipedia
• Origional datatype discussion
• Original plist datatype mapping proposal
• Revised xoxo datatype proposal