Tiger.Types.JSON

What It Is

Tiger.Types.JSON is a library that allows some of the Tiger types to be mapped to or from JSON in useful ways.

Why You Want It

Tiger types are unfamiliar to the JSON.NET serialization library, and due to the way that they represent values, require a little help to serialize or deserialize properly. This is similar to serializing a type of Nullable<T> (also written as T?). One could imagine an implementation of Option<int> called Count that serializes as a property of another object like this:

{
  "count": {
    "value": 42,
    "hasValue": true
  }
}

…which would require a client to create a very strange DTO or take a dependency on the Tiger types. (For various, difficult-to-believe reasons, the latter may be undesirable.)

Because all types in JSON are effectively nullable or optional, a superior serialization is this:

{
  "count": 42
}

…where the None state is represented either by the JSON value null or by omitting the key entirely. This allows a client to implement a DTO with a property of type int? which can have a value or be null, of type int which will receive a default value (in this case, 0), or of type Option<int>.

The supported operations for types are currently these:

• Option: Serialize, deserialize
• Either: Serialize

How You Develop It

This project is using the standard dotnet build tool. A brief primer:

• Restore NuGet dependencies: dotnet restore
• Build the entire solution: dotnet build
• Run all unit tests: dotnet test
• Pack for publishing: dotnet pack -o "$(pwd)/dist"

The parameter --configuration (shortname -c) can be supplied to the build, test, and pack steps with the following meaningful values:

• “Debug” (the default)
• “Release”

This repository is attempting to use the GitFlow branching methodology. Results may be mixed, please be aware.

Thank You

Seriously, though. Thank you for using this software. The author hopes it performs admirably for you.