Stupid mistake over Javascript parameters

I have been using the Google Maps JavaScript API today. I lost too much time over a really stupid error. I was trying to set the zoom level on a map using the call

map.setZoom();

I had set my initial zoom level to 5 (the scale is 1-17 I think) in the map load, when I called setZoom to 11 all was fine, but if I set it to any other number is reverted to 5. This different effect for different numbers was a real red herring. The problem was down to how I was handling the variable containing the zoom level prior to passing it to setZoom method. When it was set to 11 it was set explicitly e.g.

var zoomNumber = 11;

However when it was any other value it was being pulled from the value property of a combo box, so was actually a string. My problem was that setZoom does not return an error if if pass something in it does not understand, it just reverts to it’s initial value.

The solution was simple, cast the value to a string and it works as expected

map.setZoom(parseInt(ZoomNumber));