Value matching Bool or Int

[DoubleBaroness]

QLab is a great application but is somewhat simplistic in its OSC argument type support: String, Int and Float.

Is there a concise way to handle a message that could have a Bool or Int (check for non-zero) value? My first thought was to use masked with optionals, but it throws:

let (flag, num) = try message.values.masked(Bool?.self, Int32?.self)

and instead have a verbose loop over values:

for value in message.values {
    switch value {
    case let val as Bool:
        _ = val
        continue
    case let val as Int32:
        _ = val != 0
        continue
    default:
        break
    }
}

Is there a better way to handle this?

[orchetect]

I just ran into this last week actually.

There is a metatype called AnyOSCNumberValue in OSCKit that can mask for any number but it doesn’t include Bool which is often loosely interchangeable. Some clients send actual Bool true/false but some send Int or Float 1/0 as “boolean” numeric values.

My solution was a two-step cascade to first test the value mask using Bool for the value in question using try?, then test the value mask using AnyOSCNumberValue for the value in question but allow that one to finally throw in the event of value type mismatching.

if let (flag, num) = try? message.values.masked(Bool.self, Int32.self) {
    // first arg is Bool
} else {
    let (flag, num) = try message.values.masked(AnyOSCNumberValue.self, Int32.self)
    let flagBool: Bool = flag.intValue == 1
}

I could envision expanding AnyOSCNumberValue masking to include Bool in OSCKit however.

Note that you only want to make a value type Optional in the masked() pattern if the value in question may be omitted entirely. If they need to be present, use non-Optional types.

[orchetect]

@DoubleBaroness I have released 1.2.1 which now allows AnyOSCNumberValue to match against an OSC bool value.

That means only a single mask call is needed:

if let (flag, num) = try message.values.masked(AnyOSCNumberValue.self, Int32.self) {
    // flag can be any of the following: int32, int64, float32, double, or bool
    let flagBool = flag.boolValue // convenience property to get Bool
}