serilize.js: Extended JSON serilization

This extends the default JSON serialization adding the following:

• Recursive data structure serialization
• undefined/NaN serialization
• Set/Map serialization
• Function serialization (off by default)
• Deep and partial-deep cleen object copy

Motivation

This was originally built as a companion to a testing module for a programming class, illustrating several concepts, including: guaranteed clean isolation of data structures via serialization, instrumenting code and tooling design, basic parsing, among others.

Installation

$ npm install ig-serilaize

Or just download and drop serialize.js into your code.

Introduction

Serializing functions

Due to how JavaScript is designed it is not possible to trivially and fully clone a function with all of it's references, .serilaize(..) will not attempt to clone any state a function may have, this will lead to loosing:

• Function closure
• Attributes set on the function or any of it's prototypes, including the .__proto__ value if it was changed.

Thus, care must be taken when serializing structures containing function.

API

serialize(..) / eJSON.stringify(..)

deserialize(..) / 'eJSON.parse(..)'

deepCopy(..)

partialDeepCopy(..)

Format

The output of .serialize(..) is a strict superset of standard JSON, while the input format is a bit more relaxed than in several details.

Extensions to JSON:

• Recursion
• undefined / NaN
• BigInt
• Map / Set
• Function

Structural paths

Recursion

If an object is encountered

null types

BigInt

Map / Set

Functions