json-transformer

A small, chainable, immutable JSON transformer for TypeScript/Node. Build a pipeline of pick/omit/rename/map/defaults/flatten steps once, then run it against a single object or an array of objects. The input is never mutated — every step returns a new object. Zero runtime dependencies.

Install

Copy src/index.ts into your project, or build this repo (npm run build) and depend on the compiled dist/.

Quickstart

import { transform } from 'json-transformer';

const pipeline = transform()
  .omit(['internal_id'])
  .rename({ 'user.name': 'user.fullName' })
  .map('user.email', (e) => String(e).toLowerCase())
  .defaults({ 'user.address.country': 'UK' });

const result = pipeline.run(input);       // single object
const results = pipeline.runMany(inputs); // array of objects

The same pipeline object can be reused across many inputs — building the chain does no work; .run()/.runMany() is what executes it.

API

All methods return a new JSONTransformer (the chain is immutable too) and accept dot-notation paths ('user.address.city') for nested access.

• transform() — start a new empty chain.
• .pick(paths: string[]) — keep only these dot-paths, drop everything else.
• .omit(paths: string[]) — drop these dot-paths, keep everything else.
• .rename(mapping: Record<string, string>) — move a value from one dot-path to another ({ 'old.path': 'new.path' }); the old key is removed.
• .map(path: string, fn: (value) => value) — replace the value at a dot-path with fn(value). No-op if the path is absent.
• .defaults(values: Record<string, unknown>) — set dot-paths to a default only where currently absent.
• .flatten() — nested objects to dot-notation keys: { a: { b: 1 } } → { 'a.b': 1 }.
• .unflatten() — the inverse of .flatten().
• .pipe(fn: (obj) => obj) — drop in a custom step.
• .run(input: object) — execute the chain on one object.
• .runMany(inputs: object[]) — execute the chain on each object in an array.

Scope and limits

• Operates on plain JSON-shaped objects (Record<string, unknown>); arrays are treated as leaf values by pick/flatten/unflatten, not recursed into by dot-path (no items.0.name-style indexing).
• flatten()/unflatten() use . as the path separator; keys that legitimately contain a literal . will collide with nested paths.
• Not a validation or schema library — pair with a validator if you need to enforce shape as well as reshape it.

Sponsored by Ferrow

Part of the ferrow-toolkit collection · Sponsored by Ferrow