📦 Packaging Tape

This module tries to help you with packaging JavaScript objects into JSON representation without losing the class an object may be bound to.

Example

import {jsonSerializer} from 'packaging-tape';

class User {
    constructor(name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
    sayHi () {
        console.log(`Hi ${this.name}!`)
    }
}

const myJSON = jsonSerializer({
    customTypes: [User]
});

const user = new User('alice');

const coreSerializer = JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(user));
console.log(coreSerializer);          // Outputs: { name: 'alice' }
coreSerializer.sayHi();               // Throws: Uncaught TypeError: coreSerializer.sayHi is not a function

const packagingTapeSerializer = myJSON.parse(myJSON.stringify(user));
console.log(packagingTapeSerializer); // Outputs: User { name: 'alice' }
packagingTapeSerializer.sayHi();      // Outputs: Hi alice!

API

The API should be a drop-in replacement of the core implementation JSON.stringify() / JSON.parse().

import {jsonSerializer} from 'packaging-tape';

const {parse, stringify} = jsonSerializer(opts);

opts is an Object with the following keys:

• customTypes: A CustomType oder an array of CustomType. Defaults to [].
• useDefaultTypes: Boolean. If set to true the core types Date, Error, Map and Set will be serialized. Defaults to true.
• indent: String or null. Controls indentation for stringify(). Defaults to null, i.e. no indentation.

CustomType is a Class (which will be used as cls as described down below) or an Object with the following keys:

• cls: The Class to be serialized.
• name: A string. Name for the internal representation. Defaults to cls.name.
• pack: A method for packing cls: (unpacked) => packed with unpacked being the instance to be packed and packed to for the representation. Make sure packed uses only core types like string, number, boolean, array, object. Defaults to: cls.pack() and if not available (x) => ({...x}).
• unpack: A method for unpacking cls: (packed) => unpacked with unpacked being the instance to be packed and packed to for the representation. Make sure unpack(pack(myInstance)) yields the same info a myInstance. Defaults to cls.unpack() and if not available (x) => Object.assign(new c.cls(), x).