Why defaultValue or value api in Select component always must be string type ?

[iamyahia]

Hey developers,

I was checking out the radix-ui documentation API, and it mentions that both defaultValue and value types always have to be strings. But I'm curious why it's necessary for them to always be strings ?

In my project, I'm using the Select component from radix, and my options value looks like this:

options = {
  value: string | number,
  label: string
}

In our project, the value key sometimes has a string value, and in other cases, it might have a number value. Occasionally, we pass this value key to defaultValue.

However, the problem arises when we pass a number to it. TypeScript shows a warning message:

Type 'number' is not assignable to type 'string'.ts(2322)
index.d.mts(13, 5): The expected type comes from property 'defaultValue' which is declared here on type 'IntrinsicAttributes & SelectProps'

So, my question remains: Why is it necessary for defaultValue and value to always be of type string? for what reason ? for what logics ? i want to understand the purpos.

[benoitgrelard]

Because this is the underlying type of a native select.