Serializer Specification

"Serializer" refers to Graphif Serializer, which has a official implementation @graphif/serializer.

This is an object serialization format based on JavaScript.

It has three core concepts: instance, other types, and reference.

Instance

Instance is a JavaScript object with prototype.

It stores the name of prototype in property _, and other properties are stored as key-value pairs.

{
  "_": "ClassName",
  "property1": "value1",
  "property2": 42,
  "property3": true
}

Instance is nestable, meaning that properties can be other instances or other types.

{
  "_": "ClassName",
  "property1": {
    "_": "OtherClass",
    "otherProperty": "otherValue"
  },
  "property2": [1, 2, 3],
  "property3": null
}

Other Types

Other values will stored as is, including:

• Primitive types: string, number, boolean, null, undefined
• Array: [value1, value2, ...]
• Plain object (without prototype): { key1: value1, key2: value2, ... }

Reference

If there are same objects in the serialized data, implementations may store them as references to save space.

A reference is an object with property $, which value is a path string to the referred object, and implementations should replace with the referred object.

[
  {
    "_": "ClassName",
    "property": "value",
    "other": {
      "value": 42
    }
  },
  { "$": "/0" },
  { "$": "/0/other" }
]

Path String

Path string is a string that starts with /, followed by a series of keys or indices separated by /.