Proposal - Truthiness (Mainly to Decide Empty Object)

[TotalTechGeek]

Background

I'm hopeful this proposal can pass through quickly, it mostly solidifies some conventions that already exist in tests.json, but we do need to decide if:

• Empty Objects are Truthy or Falsey
• Objects are Truthy

Proposal

I'd personally like objects to be universally truthy, but this is completely negotiable. json-logic-js and json-logic-php treat empty object as truthy, but this is not codified in tests.json.

Tests

[
    "# This can also be seen as a test suite for !!",
    "# Primitive Truthiness tests",
    {
        "description": "Truthy: true",
        "rule": { "!!": true },
        "result": true,
        "data": null
    },
    {
        "description": "Falsey: false",
        "rule": { "!!": false },
        "result": false,
        "data": null
    },
    {
        "description": "Truthy: 1",
        "rule": { "!!": 1 },
        "result": true,
        "data": null
    },
    {
        "description": "Falsey: 0",
        "rule": { "!!": 0 },
        "result": false,
        "data": null
    },
    {
        "description": "Truthy: -1",
        "rule": { "!!": -1 },
        "result": true,
        "data": null
    },
    {
        "description": "Falsey: []",
        "rule": { "!!": [[]] },
        "result": false,
        "data": null
    },
    {
        "description": "Falsey: ''",
        "rule": { "!!": "" },
        "result": false,
        "data": null
    },
    {
        "description": "Falsey: null",
        "rule": { "!!": null },
        "result": false,
        "data": null
    },
    "# Context Object Tests",
    {
        "description": "Truthy: Zero Key Object",
        "rule": { "!!": { "val": "obj" } },
        "result": true,
        "data": { "obj": {} }
    },
    {
        "description": "Truthy: Single Key Object",
        "rule": { "!!": { "val": "obj" } },
        "result": true,
        "data": { "obj": { "a": 0 } }
    },
    {
        "description": "Truthy: Multi Key Object",
        "rule": { "!!": { "val": "obj" } },
        "result": true,
        "data": { "obj": { "a": 0, "b": 0 } }
    },
    {
        "description": "Truthy: Single Key Object (Empty Key)",
        "rule": { "!!": { "val": "obj" } },
        "result": true,
        "data": { "obj": { "": 0 } }
    }
]

[TotalTechGeek]

This guy is kinda holding up my if and or proposal, I figure it might be best to decide on object truthiness before I start hammering out those guys.

[dslmeinte]

@TotalTechGeek I guess time works differently for everyone. For me personally, I can look at things coming in as a trickle, but unfortunately, I don't have time for a deluge of discussions on 3 separate GitHub issues. If you'd like my input on something specifically, please ping me.

[TotalTechGeek]

Sorry about that! I'll try to keep it to a trickle going forward.

Had a bit of a deluge of things pop up; so I wasn't able to publish some things when intended.

Most of these guys are relatively small, "should empty object pass through", "is empty object truthy"

But I understand the frustration 😄

[beeme1mr]

I think treating empty objects as truthy would be the expected behavior for most users.

[TotalTechGeek]

It is kind of what I'd expect, but since empty array is falsy, I could understand the argument for the other side 😂

I'm going to interpret this as a +1 for the current proposal though.

[TotalTechGeek]

Self +1.

Current Votes

Aggregate	TC Votes in Favor	Votes
5	3	@TotalTechGeek (+1) @beeme1mr (+1) @dslmeinte (+1) @codetiger (+1) @toddbaert (+1)

Here is a link to our voting procedures.

[codetiger]

+1

[TotalTechGeek]

Need just one more @json-logic/tc approval for this to move forward.

[toddbaert]

+1

[toddbaert]

It's not may favorite that [] is falsy and {} is truthy, but I think in this case, adding another unexpectedly falsy thing (empty objects) is better than consistency.

[dslmeinte]

For CertLogic, I chose to consider the empty object truthy: https://github.com/ehn-dcc-development/eu-dcc-business-rules/blob/main/certlogic/specification/README.md#truthy-and-falsy-values
But then again, we were catering for a very specific context then — see also the remark “Note: null, the empty string, the zero integer, the empty array, and the empty object all being falsy (and not truthy) is useful for checking the presence/existence of values in the data context.”

For the case of JSON Logic, I'm guessing that all objects being (universally) truthy is probably the most consistent choice.

[TotalTechGeek]

I'm going to interpret this as a +1 for the proposal.