[lexical] Feature: Exclude nodes from serialization

[TryingToImprove]

This tries to solve #4273

My use case for this is that I am adding a DecoratorNode into my editor, however I do not want to persist that Node.

I would like feedback, since I am new to the codebase

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Name	Status	Preview	Comments	Updated (UTC)
lexical	❌ Failed (Inspect)			Jul 2, 2024 7:06am
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Path	Size
lexical - cjs	28.47 KB (0%)
lexical - esm	28.28 KB (0%)
@lexical/rich-text - cjs	36.86 KB (0%)
@lexical/rich-text - esm	28.08 KB (0%)
@lexical/plain-text - cjs	35.49 KB (0%)
@lexical/plain-text - esm	25.3 KB (0%)
@lexical/react - cjs	38.82 KB (0%)
@lexical/react - esm	29.27 KB (0%)

[TryingToImprove]

I will need some guidance on whether or not this would be the correct way to handle excluding nodes before I continue :)

[etrepum]

I think the excludeFromCopy approach discussed in #4273 would be easier to implement correctly and have fewer consequences for existing code (maybe using the clone destination? I don't see any existing code in the monorepo that explicitly deals with that, but it's already present on the type). Changing the return type of exportJSON is very much not backwards compatible.

[TryingToImprove]

I think the excludeFromCopy approach discussed in #4273 would be easier to implement correctly and have fewer consequences for existing code (maybe using the clone destination? I don't see any existing code in the monorepo that explicitly deals with that, but it's already present on the type). Changing the return type of exportJSON is very much not backwards compatible.

Yea, I was also considering that approach, however I would be surprised myself if I did an serialization and did not get the node because of excludeFromCopy, but yes might seem like the best approach..

As far as I can see the clone is not being used for anything, but would probably prefer an destination like serialization

The backward compatibility issue is one of the reason I stopped where there code is now, since a lot of stuff breaks if exportJSON can return null too.

The reason I went with returning null was to be aligned with exportDOM..

[etrepum]

I think there are three reasonable approaches:

1. Use excludeFromCopy with the existing clone destination. This will change semantics for nodes that implement this method without considering the destination.
2. Use excludeFromCopy with a new destination. This will change semantics for nodes that implement this method without considering the destination, and may require code changes for compatibility with the new parameter type.
3. Add a new method specifically for this purpose (e.g. excludeFromExport), possibly with the intent of being more general (e.g. it could defer to the existing excludeFromCopy in some situations). This would be fully backwards compatible and not change semantics for any existing code (unless there is a name conflict), but it would make the API more complex.

[etrepum]

With a quick look at the monorepo code it seems that options 1 & 2 would probably break the current implementation of OverflowNode, since it unconditionally returns true from excludeFromCopy. Wouldn't necessarily be a problem on its own since it could be updated at the same time, but if others have copied its implementation and expect it to be JSON serialized then that could cause problems.

[TryingToImprove]

I think I prefer excludeFromExport with an destination parameter like excludeFromCopy so it would be possible to use it for both HTML and JSON..

The excluding of nodes can be done in user-land as I have done it now and the issue is kind of stale, so the feature might not be worth the complexity - I am not sure..

[etrepum]

Closing this PR due to staleness! If there are new updates, please reopen the PR.