How do I set a default value for an attribute of type Object?

Question

How do I set a default value for an attribute with type Object? In the example below, the default value for the country attribute should be an object with two properties: name and capital. At runtime, however, it defaults to the string "{'name':'France','capital':'Paris'}" and not an object.

<aura:attribute name="country" type="Object" default="{'name':'France','capital':'Paris'}" />

My work-around for now is to set the value in the init handler, but I'd still like to know what I'm doing wrong.

Answer 1

Well using type="Map" works fine, and it returns object as expected.

<aura:attribute name="country" type="Map" default="{'name':'France','capital':'Paris'}" />

Here's the link to the section in the doc where attributes of collection type is discussed.

Answer 2

Accepted answer is the correct one but as an alternative approach, you can set the object in a helper function which can be initialized by an init method when the component is created. For example:

cmp.set('v.country', {
  name: 'France',
  capital: 'Paris,
});

I like this approach because if there are many objects on the HTML, lot of code can be moved and HTML is cleaner.