API Design · Junior · Question 22 of 75

Why might an API return large numeric IDs as strings in JSON?

1JSON doesn't support numbers
✓Correct answer: JavaScript numbers lose precision above 2^53, so 64-bit IDs can be silently corrupted in browsers
3Strings are smaller than numbers

Explanation

Twitter-style 64-bit IDs are a classic example. Clients shouldn't do math on IDs anyway.

Further reading

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