JASON

JASON is just like JSON, but with an A. D'oh. ^U

JASON is just like JSON, but unlike JSON it can:

• serialize objects with methods
• serialize objects with cyclic references
• understand Dates, Regexps, Booleans, etc, and restore them with .parse() with their proper types/classes.
• understand and serialize all the JS primitives, including undefined
• properly recreate the holes in Arrays

JASON lets you pass objects as text between processes and/or threads.

Warning: unlike JSON, JASON is unsafe. You should only use it in contexts where you have strong guarantees that the strings that you pass to the JASON parser have been produced by a JASON formatter from a trusted source.

Syntax

JASON syntax is just plain JavaScript (but not JSON).

The stringify function does the clever work of generating whatever Javascript is needed to recreate the object, and the parse function is just a call to eval.

Examples

See the test/test01.js file.

API

var JASON = require("JASON");

str = JASON.stringify(obj);
obj = JASON.parse(str);

Installation

The easiest way to install JASON is with NPM:

npm install JASON

Caveats

JASON won't capture any free vars' values in the serializations. If a JASON serialization contains any functions or methods that contain references to free vars (any other than the built-in globals), most of the times bad things will happen, unless the referenced free vars exist as well and are in scope in the context in which the serialization is JASON.parse()d (the global context), or unless the serialization is eval()ed in a context in which said references exist and are in scope.

For example here pi is a free var:

var txt= JASON.stringify(function () { return pi });

So this usually won't work:

JASON.parse(txt)();

ReferenceError: pi is not defined

unless there's a pi var in scope:

var pi= 3.14;
JASON.parse(txt)();

3.14

License

This work is licensed under the MIT license.