dataclass

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Serialization & Deserialization ​

Serialization ​

By default, when using JSON.stringify(), an instance will be serialized to a plain object with all the fields as is. This works without any additional effort

ts
class User extends Data {
  name: string = "Anonymous";
  age: number = 0;

  // implicit behavior, no need to implement
  toJSON(): Object {
    return { name: this.name, age: this.age };
  }
}

let user = User.create({ name: "Liza", age: 23 });
// > User { name: "Liza", age: 23 }

JSON.stringify(user);
// > { "name": "Liza", "age": 23 }

Deserialization ​

In cases where the input data cannot be determined (API requests) or there should be some additional data preparation done, it is recommended to provide custom and agnostic static methods:

ts
class User extends Data {
  name: string = "Anonymous";
  age: number = 0;

  // custom method with arbitrary interface
  static from(data: Object): User {
    let name: string = data.name;
    let age: number = parseInt(data.age, 10);
    return User.create({ name, age });
  }
}

let user = User.from({ name: "Liza", age: "18", someUnusedFlag: true });

That's how native things handle these cases: see Array.from().