toHuman() but with regular numbers

Question

The toHuman() call on Types casts numbers into formatted strings and rounds currency values.

I would like to store large amounts of block information in human-readable format, but not lose the precision of numbers or have them casted into strings.

Is there a way to enjoy the benefits of human-readable objects without having numbers cast into strings and precision lost?

Answer 1

Try toPrimitive instead and you will get a JS number (when < 2^53 -1) or a string value when it is larger.

Here is an example of it being used to decode an extrinsic. You can see the numbers are not formatted as strings.

If having numbers cast to strings is an issue then use toHex.

Answer 2

I solved my issue by monkey patching the toHuman() method of AbstractInt. Now I can call toHuman() on any object and all nested ints will convert the way I need them. Not a clean solution, but in my case it does the job.

import {AbstractInt} from "@polkadot/types-codec/abstract/Int";


AbstractInt.prototype.toHuman = function (isExpanded?: boolean): any {
    if(this.bitLength() <= 64) {
        return this.toPrimitive();
    }
    return this.toBn().toString();
};