I’ve noticed that some of the input types for smartApp preferences don’t match the documentation. For example the password type is not masked/obscured as stated in the documentation. Is this a known issue or is a fix planned in the near future?
http://docs.smartthings.com/en/latest/smartapp-developers-guide/preferences-and-settings.html (the table listing the types is towards the end of the page)
Hi Kyle,
I didn’t double check with any code, but this seems to be a previously noted issue here:
Perhaps @Jim (documentation guy) will put this on this todo list as at least a “documentation footnote”, until a bugfix gets into the queue.
…CP / Terry.
@Jim, please check the documentation about “inputs”.
http://docs.smartthings.com/en/latest/smartapp-developers-guide/preferences-and-settings.html#input
In particular, boolean type input stores values as strings "true" and "false".
From my observation, bool stores values as actual true and false.
Thanks
Perhaps it’s the lack of coffee this morning, or the long holiday weekend… but I don’t see a reference in that page to bool’s being stored as strings…
We can certainly update that input elem type to be more clear about the value being returned as a boolean, just don’t want to miss your original point…
@Jim, let me give you two examples.
This example is according to the docs and preference is set to “OFF” in a SmartApp.
input "pref1", "boolean", title: "abc"
Then the following lines
log.debug "is pref1 false? -> ${settings.pref1 == false}"
log.debug "is pref1 "false"? -> ${settings.pref1 == 'false'}"
produce
is pref1 false? -> false
is pref1 "false"? -> true
If I use “bool” rather than “boolean” as a preference type:
input "pref2", "bool", title: "abc"
Then the following lines
log.debug "is pref2 false? -> ${settings.pref2 == false}"
log.debug "is pref2 "false"? -> ${settings.pref2 == 'false'}"
produce
is pref2 false? -> true
is pref2 "false"? -> false
Input type “boolean” stores values as strings “true” and “false”, which contradicts the documentation.
Ah… I see what you’re saying now. You are correct, and the bool type wasn’t doc’d before.
Check out the input element docs now - you should see bool there, along with clarifications about boolean.
Long story short - use bool - it gives you a boolean value back (which is generally preferred), and works consistently in the simulator and mobile clients.
Apologies for the confusion, thanks for pointing it out.
Perfect, thank you! 
Glad to find this thread. Very disturbing!! I wasted hours today on this issue!!!
And, that doc page does NOT help as searching for “boolean” all day long will NOT find that!
try it - search for boolean and try to see if that pops up glaringly to help…
Any idea why this change?