Posting non-string data to Parse.com using Webhook

[pteja]

Continuing the discussion from Webhooks with decimal data:

@mhdevx

Hi,

I created a Webhook to post data to parse.com. That works well except for one tiny detail: decimal numbers are converted to Strings. Is there a way to preserve the double or int type?

My event looks like the this:

{"name":"sensor","data":"{\"status\": 0, \"temp\": 10.46, \"pressure\": 1001.26, \"humidity\": 75.91, \"soil1\": 3290, \"soil2\": 3268, \"soil3\": 3294}","ttl":"60","published_at":"2015-10-15T12:35:08.693Z","coreid":"25002c000447343339373536"}

All the relevant data types of the JSON object are decimals, like status, temp, etc.
The following Webhook is configured to post that data to parse.com:

{
    "eventName": "sensor",
    "deviceid": "25002c000447343339373536",
    "url": "https://api.parse.com/1/classes/Status",
    "requestType": "POST",
    "headers": {
        "X-Parse-Application-Id": "12345678",
        "X-Parse-REST-API-Key": "12345678",
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
    },
    "json": {
        "status": "{{status}}",
        "temperature": "{{temp}}",
        "pressure": "{{pressure}}",
        "humidity": "{{humidity}}",
        "soil1": "{{soil1}}",
        "soil2": "{{soil2}}",
        "soil3": "{{soil3}}",
        "coreid": "{{SPARK_CORE_ID}}"
    },
    "mydevices": true,
    "noDefaults": true
}

Technically that working well, I can see the data on the parse.com dashboard. My only problem are the quotes, for the JSON data send, like:

"status": "{{status}}"

This results in status stored as string at parse.com but I would like to store it as decimal.

"status": {{status}}

This (without the quotes) does not work. Creating the Webhook fails with the following error:

tryParse error [SyntaxError: Unexpected token {]
Please check your .json file for syntax error.

Any idea how this can be solved?

Thx
Markus

[pteja]

Thanks @mhdevx. That was really helpful. You saved me a day

How did you convert string to decimal / int on Parse.com?

[mhdevx]

@pteja I solved that on the parse.com side using their cloud code API. Here you have the option to modify data before or after it is saved.

See here: https://www.parse.com/docs/cloudcode/guide#cloud-code-modifying-objects-on-save

It is not really nice. You can not modify the data type for a variable (at least it didn’t work for me), so I copy them into new fields parsing strings to int or float and remove the original string value.