render_hook transforms keys to strings, but leaves values as is

[LostKobrakai]

Environment

• Elixir version (please paste the output of elixir -v):

Erlang/OTP 28 [erts-16.1] [source] [64-bit] [smp:14:14] [ds:14:14:10] [async-threads:1] [jit]

Elixir 1.19.1 (compiled with Erlang/OTP 28)

• Phoenix and LiveView versions (mix deps | grep -w 'phoenix\|phoenix_live_view'):

* phoenix 1.8.3 (Hex package) (mix)
  locked at 1.8.3 (phoenix) 36169f95
* phoenix_live_view 1.1.19 (Hex package) (mix)
  locked at 1.1.19 (phoenix_live_view) d5ad357d

• Operating system:

• Windows
• MacOS
• Linux
• Other (please specify):

• Browsers (including version) you attempted to reproduce this bug on (the more the merrier):

None

Actual behavior

Render hook data is transformed to string keys, but not to a format you would be able to get from json decoding.

   assert render_hook(view, "add_item", %{
               product_family: :lights,
               catalog: "123",
               product_preset: "456",
               product_series: nil,
               location: %{}
             })

Inspected as received in the handle_event/3 callback:

%{
  "catalog" => "123",
  "location" => %{},
  "product_family" => :lights,
  "product_preset" => "456",
  "product_series" => nil
}

Expected behavior

The atom would be expected to become a string as well.

%{
  "catalog" => "123",
  "location" => %{},
  "product_family" => "lights",
  "product_preset" => "456",
  "product_series" => nil
}

[SteffenDE]

Correct, the question is if we should change that, as it's been like that for a long time.

phoenix_live_view/lib/phoenix_live_view/test/client_proxy.ex

Lines 354 to 358 in 4e20993

	{values, upload} =
	case value do
	%Upload{} = upload -> {%{}, upload}
	_ -> {stringify(value, & &1), nil}
	end

https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view/blob/main/lib/phoenix_live_view/test/utils.ex

Maybe we just add a note to the docs? (I wanted to revisit render_hook anyway and maybe deprecate it in favor of a generic render_event. If we do that, we could also provide a flag to simulate JSON en+decoding).

[LostKobrakai]

I would argue we want to do that, given the behavour is the same e.g. params passed to PhoenixTest.post/3.