Feature Request: Support Boolean Type Conversion for ArkEnv

[Cyb3rN8]

Problem Description:

Currently, ArkEnv reads all environment variables as strings by default. This causes issues when dealing with boolean values, as they are also interpreted as strings.

For example, a boolean environment variable like ENABLE_FEATURE=true is read as the string "true" instead of the boolean value true.

Use Case:

In cases where environment variables are used to configure features or toggles, boolean values are essential. We need a way to reliably convert these string values into actual boolean types within ArkEnv.

Proposed Solution:

Introduce a mechanism to automatically convert string values to boolean types when appropriate. This could involve:

Explicit Type Definition: Allow users to specify the expected type of an environment variable (e.g., boolean).
Automatic Type Inference: If possible, automatically detect and convert string values that represent boolean values ("true", "false", "1", "0", etc.).
Custom Conversion Functions: Provide a way to define custom conversion functions for specific environment variables.
Example:

For non-optional attributes with default values, the following code snippet demonstrates a workaround:

type("string").pipe((str) => Boolean(str).valueOf());

However, this approach doesn't address the scenario where the boolean value is a key within an object.

Additional Considerations:

How to handle cases where the string value cannot be converted to a boolean (e.g., "invalid")?
Should this conversion be optional or enabled by default?
Request:

Please consider implementing a solution to support boolean type conversion for ArkEnv, providing a more robust and flexible way to handle environment variable configuration.

Thank you.

[yamcodes]

That's a good suggestion and something I'd say is essential for a env var parser and validator.

Although, maybe we should just try to cast everything from string to a potential type first, this way it can also work for numbers (and object)

Of course, we can provide flags to control this.

But ultimately if you use ArkEnv to state that a given variable should be a number, an object, or a Boolean, I'd expect ArkEnv to try and cast it to that from string first.