JSON+

JSON5-compliant parser for node with a few extensions. See http://fordi.org/json-plus for syntactical details. Code is on Github.

Motivation

Originally, this was started to add a simple type parameter in front of Objects, so as to give more information for deserialization.

I also wanted to add explicit support for circular objects, as that's often a pain point in state communication.

When I learned of JSON5, it seemed silly not to include its modest changes to the spec, so I did. That's where you get comments, unquoted keys, single quotes, multi-line strings, hex, Infinity, and NaN.

The implementation of multiple name instance handling was a choice to let another developer make that decision. There are cases where data is more accurately represented using multiple name instances (like direct serialization of query parameters). It's probably the least important feature, though.

Install for your project

npm install https://github.com/Fordi/json-plus --save

API

const jsonPlus = require('json-plus');

Parsing

var parsed = jsonPlus.parse(inputString, handlers);

• inputString - a valid JSON+ string

• handlers - an object whose keys are factories for named types, e.g., if you wanted to use a type named Person, you'd pass:

    handlers = {
        Person: (def) => {
            return new Person(def);
        }
    };
  

  You can also define a special handler called multiValue(obj, oldValue, key, newValue), which will be called each time there's a duplicate name on an object definition. it should return the new value, for example, the default behavior is:

    handlers = {
        multiValue: (obj, oldValue, key, newValue) => newValue
    };
  

  ... but you may want to make multiple definitions result in an array, e.g.,

    handlers = {
        multiValue: (obj, oldValue, key, newValue) => {
            if (!Array.isArray(oldValue)) {
                oldValue = [ oldValue ];
            }
            oldValue.push(newValue);
            return oldValue;
        }
    };
  

  There's already a handler for that sort of behavior, which uses jsonPlus.MultiValue to encapsulate things. jsonPlus.MultiValue has the added benefit that it won't get confused with properties that are already Arrays, and that its valueOf() and toString() functions behaves like the normal behavior (e.g., it returns the value of or the string value of the last object that was defined).

Stringifying

var strung = jsonPlus.stringify(jsObj, indentLength);

• jsObj - the object to be stringified
• indentLength - the number of spaces to indent with

For specialized stringification, you can define toJsonPlus(indentString) on your objects, which should return a your object's string representation in JSON+.