Keen IO mixed property values (integers as strings)

Question

Since Keen is not strongly typed, I've noticed it is possible to send data of different types into the same property. For instance, some events may have a property whose value is a String (sent surrounded by quotes), and some whose value is an integer (sent without quotes). In the case of mathematical operations, what is the expected behavior?

Answer 1

Yes, you're correct, Keen can accept data of different types as the value for your properties. An example of Keen's lenient data type is that a property such as VisitorID can contain both numbers (ie 14558) or strings (ie "14558").

This is article from the Keen site is useful for seeing where you can check data types: https://keen.io/docs/data-collection/data-modeling-guide-200/#check-for-data-type-mismatch

Answer 2

Our comparator will only compute mathematical operations on numbers. If you have a property whose values are mixed, the operation will only apply to the numbers, strings will be ignored. You can see the values in your property by running a select_unique query on that property as the target_property, then (if you're using the Explorer) selecting JSON from the drop-down in the top-right. Any values you see there that are surrounded by quotes will be ignored by a mathematical query type (minimum, maximum, median, average, percentile, and sum).

If you are just starting out, and you know you want to be able to do mathematical operations on this property, we recommend making sure that you always send integers as numbers (without quotes). If you really want to keep your dataset clean, you can even start a new collection once you've made sure you are no longer sending any strings.