Why does the declarative notation return strings when integers are passed?

Question

This in a template file:

<script type="text/x-magento-init">
    {
        "*": {

            "component": {
                "my_config" : "<?php echo 0; ?>"
            }

        }
    }
</script>

will be transformed to a string in the component javascript file. This is really annoying because 0 is not a falsey value in js, so:

if(config.my_config){ ... }

will not work. This is just an example, there are others where you want to make sure you return integers and you lose time trying to debug what's happening.

Answer 1

Your code produce:

<script type="text/x-magento-init">
    {
        "*": {

            "component": {
                "my_config" : "0"
            }

        }
    }
</script>

But looks like you need:

<script type="text/x-magento-init">
    {
        "*": {

            "component": {
                "my_config" : 0
            }

        }
    }
</script>

So write code like:

<script type="text/x-magento-init">
    {
        "*": {

            "component": {
                "my_config" : <?php echo json_encode(0); ?>
            }

        }
    }
</script>