type checking in javascript

Question

How can I check if a variable is currently an integer type? I\'ve looked for some sort of resource for this and I think the === operator is important, but I\'m not sure how

Answer 1

A variable will never be an integer type in JavaScript — it doesn't distinguish between different types of Number.

You can test if the variable contains a number, and if that number is an integer.

(typeof foo === "number") && Math.floor(foo) === foo

If the variable might be a string containing an integer and you want to see if that is the case:

foo == parseInt(foo, 10)

Answer 2

Quite a few utility libraries such as YourJS offer functions for determining if something is an array or if something is an integer or a lot of other types as well. YourJS defines isInt by checking if the value is a number and then if it is divisible by 1:

function isInt(x) {
  return typeOf(x, 'Number') && x % 1 == 0;
}

The above snippet was taken from this YourJS snippet and thusly only works because typeOf is defined by the library. You can download a minimalistic version of YourJS which mainly only has type checking functions such as typeOf(), isInt() and isArray(): http://yourjs.com/snippets/build/34,2