Support for numeric input

[markfarkas-camunda]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
In some cases a numeric type input would be necessary.

For example: I would like to create a template based on the http-json (rest) connector, to call an API, but that API might only accept numeric values for certain properties in the body of the request.

Describe the solution you'd like
It would be awesome if I could define an input field with "type": "Number" instead of "type": "String".

Describe alternatives you've considered
An alternative solution can be to convert the value from string to number with the number() function first, and then use this in the body of the request. In my opinion this is very inconvenient though.

[korthout]

Hi @markfarkas-camunda 👋 I don't fully understand your request.

It would be awesome if I could define an input field with "type": "Number" instead of "type": "String".

Input mappings can evaluate to any of the supported types, not just strings. Why would you need to define a type?

Can you please clarify, what you're trying to achieve, and what the missing functionality in Zeebe is? Perhaps you can add an example process to show your case.

[markfarkas-camunda]

Hi @korthout ,
As far as I know I cannot specify "type": "Number" in the element template, and therefore when I am using the Connectors SDK to get variables, they are always a type of String. Same situation with Boolean values. You could argue that I can transform these values in the connector backend code, but that's not possible if we reuse an existing connector, e.g. the rest connector. There might be certain API calls which expect a request body with specific types. Consider the following body:

{
  "propertyName1": "value",
  "numericPropertyName": 3,
  "booleanPropertyName": true
}

In this case the value of "numericPropertyName" would be a string representation of the number 3 that might not be a valid request body.

On top of the type issue, a number or a boolean (checkbox) input would be more convenient on the front-end as it would automatically validate the input data.

[korthout]

I see, thanks for clarifying @markfarkas-camunda. I may be wrong, but it sounds to me that this is a feature request for element templates or for the Web/Desktop Modelers: being able to specify the type of an input-mapping.

@nikku Can you guide us where (in which repo) to make this feature request?

[nikku]

@markfarkas-camunda Let's handle this as a element template feature request, until we know better.

Could you re-open this in the Desktop Modeler? As you move over, please attach a concrete use-case / connector template that we can reproduce your request with. If there is any issues that require actual execution support, we'd be able to open issues on the execution side of things as a follow up.

[korthout]

Thanks @nikku - I'm closing this for now.

[nikku]

@markfarkas-camunda Did you re-open this in the Desktop Modeler as suggested? We'd want to approach this from the modeling site of things, but it appears as this issue is stalled.

[markfarkas-camunda]

@nikku thanks for noticing, I overlooked it, but created the issue now: camunda/camunda-modeler#3622