Guzzle: Float changes to string

Hello everybody,

I am trying to post some data using Guzzle like this:

<?php
$client  = $this->client;
$this->payload = ['product' => ['title' => 'footer', 'price' => 12.99]];

$options = [];

$options['headers'] = [
    'Accept'        => 'application/json',
];

if ($this->method === 'POST' && $this->payload) {
    $options['json'] = $this->payload;
}

$response = $client->request($this->method,
    'https://host.local', $options);
}

Well - this works fine, but unfortunately the float 12.99 is transmitted as string to host.local.

host.local runs a Laravel-API and unfortunately I really need to accept a full JSON object containing float instead of string.

 public function store(Request $request)
    {
        /*Validate request*/
        $request->validate([
            'data.product'                  => 'nullable|array',
            'data.product.title'            => 'required|string',
            'data.product.price'            => 'required|numeric',
        ]);
 
        $offer = Offer::create([
            'product' => $request->input('data.product'),
        ]);
    }

This is saving the JSON object with a string "12.99".

Anything I can do to:

• Transmit the value as float
• Use the Controller to handle the given value to transform them into the correct type?