Cast environment variables config values into their respective JSON schema type

[MeltyBot]

Migrated from GitLab: https://gitlab.com/meltano/sdk/-/issues/393

Originally created by @edgarrmondragon on 2022-05-20 18:16:14

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Summary

Currently only arrays of strings are parsed: value1,value2 -> ["value1", "value2"]. A similar process for number, boolean and integer would be valuable.

Proposed benefits

• Users can fully rely on environment variables and .env to configure their taps
• Richer data types can be used for environment variables

Proposal details

We already have some functions to check for data types in https://gitlab.com/meltano/sdk/-/blob/main/singer_sdk/helpers/_typing.py, so we could extend and leverage those when parsing environment variables.

Best reasons not to build

Support for environment variables is not common in the Singer ecosystem.

[MeltyBot]

View 1 previous comment from the original issue on GitLab

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[edgarrmondragon]

Very much still relevant. See MeltanoLabs/tap-jira#15 (comment)

[stale]

This has been marked as stale because it is unassigned, and has not had recent activity. It will be closed after 21 days if no further activity occurs. If this should never go stale, please add the evergreen label, or request that it be added.