See also #20223

Some generic if/then's for casting purposes would be really nice.

@ro0NL I partially agree with you. It's OK to add more if/then helpers ... but only if they are used enough. In the case of the string/number -> array conversion, it's a very common need (even in the Symfony code itself).

I'd vote for a generic solution, covering all types;

if()->is('string')->then()->castTo('array')
if()->is('numeric')->then()->castTo('int')

Something like that.

I don't like the generic solution you suggest @ro0NL as it has many drawbacks. The main one being discoverability and autocompletion (think IDEs).

As @javiereguiluz suggested, we only need some of them, the most used ones. Let's do that.

Agree. My proposed syntax may not be suitable; i actually meant #20223 (comment) and indeed for common types conversions only.

Rethinking the numeric to int conversion from #20223, it looks convenient but im not sure it's good practice. Ie. TTL values and such are probably best defined as an integer node anyway (being strict).. @chalasr wdyt?

Not saying a generic conversion api doesnt workout, but it's most likely overkill.

What about tackling both usecases pointed out by @javiereguiluz with a nice one-liner..

->beforeNormalization()
   ->castToArray()
   ->ifTrue($something)
   ->then($profit)
->end()

castToArray wraps the ifPart closure.

Any thoughts?