[5.x] Boolean values stored as strings?

[rob-c-baker]

I ran into this while querying data in one of our Craft 5 installs. This commit: 8e34669 changed the way booleans are stored in the JSON content blob in the elements_sites DB table so they are stored as the strings 'true' & 'false'. A comment suggests that it's the only reliable way to compare values.

Does anyone know why this is the case?

There must be more to this - something to do with type juggling maybe but on what level? i.e. is it to work around a database issue or something?

Can't find nay documentation relating to it so thought it might be helpful to have it here so it might pop up when searching.

[brandonkelly]

It’s been a while, but I believe this was necessary for referencing boolean values in SQL conditions.

The data is still stored as boolean true/false values, though.