Declaring a boolean in JavaScript using just var

Question

If I declare a JavaScript boolean variable like this:

var IsLoggedIn;

And then initialize it with either true or 1

Answer 1

If you want IsLoggedIn to be treated as a boolean you should initialize as follows:

var IsLoggedIn=true;

If you initialize it with var IsLoggedIn=1; then it will be treated as an integer.

However at any time the variable IsLoggedIn could refer to a different data type:

 IsLoggedIn="Hello World";

This will not cause an error.

Answer 2

How about something like this:

var MyNamespace = {
    convertToBoolean: function (value) {
        //VALIDATE INPUT
        if (typeof value === 'undefined' || value === null) return false;

        //DETERMINE BOOLEAN VALUE FROM STRING
        if (typeof value === 'string') {
            switch (value.toLowerCase()) {
                case 'true':
                case 'yes':
                case '1':
                    return true;
                case 'false':
                case 'no':
                case '0':
                    return false;
            }
        }

        //RETURN DEFAULT HANDLER
        return Boolean(value);
    }
};

Then you can use it like this:

MyNamespace.convertToBoolean('true') //true
MyNamespace.convertToBoolean('no') //false
MyNamespace.convertToBoolean('1') //true
MyNamespace.convertToBoolean(0) //false

I have not tested it for performance, but converting from type to type should not happen too often otherwise you open your app up to instability big time!