Why does Boost property tree write_json save everything as string? Is it possible to change that?

Question

I\'m trying to serialize using boost property tree write_json, it saves everything as strings, it\'s not that data are wrong, but I need to cast them explicitly every time a

Answer 1

The simplest and cleanest solution that i could come up with was generating the JSON with placeholders and in the end string replacing with the actual value ditching the extra quotes.

static string buildGetOrdersCommand() {
    ptree root;
    ptree element;
    element.put<string>("pendingOnly", ":pendingOnly");
    element.put<string>("someIntValue", ":someIntValue");

    root.put("command", "getOrders");
    root.put_child("arguments", element);

    std::ostringstream buf;
    write_json(buf, root, false);
    buf << std::endl;

    string json = buf.str();
    replace(json, ":pendingOnly", "true");
    replace(json, ":someIntValue", std::to_string(15));

    return json;
}

static void replace(string& json, const string& placeholder, const string& value) {
    boost::replace_all<string>(json, "\"" + placeholder + "\"", value);
}

And the result is

{"command":"getOrders","arguments":{"pendingOnly":true,"someIntValue":15}}