[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #61950: add_*_meta()/get_*_meta() undocumented type juggling for some meta values

[WordPress Trac]

#61950: add_*_meta()/get_*_meta() undocumented type juggling for some meta values
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 Reporter:  rodrigosprimo                 |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  defect (bug)                  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal                        |   Milestone:  6.7
Component:  Options, Meta APIs            |     Version:
 Severity:  normal                        |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  needs-patch needs-unit-tests  |     Focuses:  docs
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Comment (by azaozz):

 > there is some undocumented type juggling for some meta values

 Yep, this is pretty much the same behavior when saving and retrieving
 options. As the [https://codex.wordpress.org/Database_Description
 meta_value columns] are set to `LONGTEXT`, all values seem to be converted
 to strings on saving to the DB. Then non-serialized values are returned as
 read from the DB.

 > I believe this behavior was not introduced recently

 Right. This has been like that "forever" afaik.

 > I suggest that the DocBlock for those functions is updated to document
 this behavior explicitly

 Yea, don't think anything else can be done at this point. I actually tried
 to make options saving and retrieving to respect data types, but at the
 end there were too many edge cases that it became risky and not practical.

 A good docblock update for the different meta fields (post, comment, user,
 site, etc.) would include the full description about what's going on, and
 probably mention that the unexpected types can be avoided at the cost of a
 tiny bit more processing if the data is serialized. JSON encoding would
 also work in most cases, but may behave a bit unexpectedly when
 differentiating between objects and associative arrays.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/61950#comment:2>
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