INI Boolean Values to JSON: true/false, yes/no, on/off

Boolean Value Coercion

INI files commonly use various representations for boolean values. Different applications interpret these differently, but the most common convention treats true, yes, and on as truthy, and false, no, and off as falsy.

Example INI

[features]
enable_logging=true
verbose_mode=yes
auto_update=on
maintenance_mode=false
debug_panel=no
telemetry=off

Generated JSON

{
  "features": {
    "enable_logging": true,
    "verbose_mode": true,
    "auto_update": true,
    "maintenance_mode": false,
    "debug_panel": false,
    "telemetry": false
  }
}

Coercion Reference

INI value	JSON value	Notes
true	true	Case-insensitive (True, TRUE also work)
yes	true	Common in systemd, Apache configs
on	true	Common in php.ini
false	false	Case-insensitive
no	false	Common in SSH config, Git config
off	false	Common in php.ini
1	1 (number)	Not coerced to boolean — stays as integer
0	0 (number)	Not coerced to boolean — stays as integer

Important Distinctions

The string values "1" and "0" are treated as numeric integers, not booleans. If you need them treated as boolean, quote them in the INI file and handle the conversion in your application logic. The coercion is case-insensitive: TRUE, True, and true all produce JSON true.

Preventing Coercion

If you need to preserve boolean-like words as strings (for example, a key whose value literally should be the string "yes"), wrap the value in quotes: answer="yes". Quoted values bypass type coercion.