One of my biggest beefs with CFML in general is it's odd auto type-casting that no amount of

javacast

can fix. Examples: a string value

true

is automatically type cast as boolean, a string value

12-1

is suddenly a date, so is

35258-7

oddly. Most times it's not noticeable until you start interacting with MongoDB.

I'd like to see a repro of these. In my experience the issue is the other way around... where something is expecting a (eg) boolean, CFML will be very "forgiving" as to what it will take as a boolean: a truthy string, a numeric, a date, etc. Similar with numerics and dates and a few other things. But something that is a string (your example) seems to stay as a string until one uses it where some other type is expected..? What are you looking at?

I have seen these sorts of issues from time to time.

I wonder if the problem is MongoDB driver, because I've found that Lucee tracks datatypes very accurately, especially when javaCast() is used on a variable.

arrayAppend(loc.criteria['$or'],{"#loc.sField#": { '$regex': trim(sData), '$options':'mi'} }, true);

where sData = "true" JavaCast helps nothing in this case. Good point that it could very well be the driver though.

OK I've made a portable repro case for this (@Travis: hint): https://trycf.com/gist/20bc094e1f926c25b03cb2997a7ae563/lucee5?theme=monokai

loc.criteria['$or'] = [];
loc.sField = "someProperty";
sData = "true";
bData = true;

arrayAppend(
    loc.criteria['$or'],
    {
        "#loc.sField#": {
            '$regex': trim(sData), // "true"
            '$options':'mi',
            "bData": bData // true
        }
    },
    true
);

writeOutput(serializeJson(loc.criteria['$or']));

And this works exactly as I'd expect on CF2018+ and Lucee 5+:

[{"someProperty":{"$options":"mi","bData":true,"$regex":"true"}}]

"true"

is still

"true"

and

true

is still

true

. What are you seeing? Or how do your expectations diverge from what it does?

Then this value is sent through the MongoDB driver, it responds with an error saying the $regex value must be a string. Conversion is happening somewhere along the line.

yup but this is a Mongo problem, not a Lucee problem. Or it's an intermediary problem somewhere that you're not telling us about. But Lucee is doing the correct thing here.

@Travis,

arrayAppend(loc.criteria['$or'],{"#loc.sField#": { '$regex': trim(sData), '$options':'mi'} }, true);

The use of

trim()

is going to make

sData

a string.

The issue is reversed, MongoDB is getting that value as a boolean and not a string.

Sounds like this is a MongoDB or driver issue. Sounds like it's doing the conversion.

Quite possible.

Not being familiar with MongoDB, why are you setting $regex to true? Are you trying to filter for values that equal true?

I'm trying to filter for strings that contain "true"

Also, you could try changing your expression to something like

"^true$"

so it matches the exact value or

\btrue\b

if you're trying to match the word "true". Changing the expression above should prevent the value from being converted to a boolean.

That's my temporary workaround, but I would like it to also find results like "miscontrued"