Question about Codable implementation for BInt

[dankinsoid]

Current Codable support for BInt encodes values into an internal representation instead of a numeric literal or a string. This creates interoperability issues, because other languages typically encode big integers as strings. As a result, using BInt in API models becomes inconvenient.

For example, something like this would make it API-friendly:

extension BInt: Decodable {
    public init(from decoder: Decoder) throws {
        do {
            let integer = try Int(from: decoder)
            self = BInt(integer)
        } catch {
            let str = try String(from: decoder)
            guard let value = BInt(str) else {
                throw DecodingError.dataCorrupted(
                    .init(codingPath: decoder.codingPath,
                          debugDescription: "Invalid BInt string: \(str)")
                )
            }
            self = value
            // support current decoding for backward compatibility
        }
    }
}

extension BInt: Encodable {
    public func encode(to encoder: Encoder) throws {
        try description.encode(to: encoder)
    }
}