granola

JSON compatible string serialization for sharing object state in node.js.

Lead Maintainer - Gil Pedersen

granola provides a JSON compatible stringifier and parser with support for modern language and object primitives.

In addition to the standard JSON primitives, it can encode and decode:

• Valid Date objects.
• Map objects.
• Set objects.
• Buffer objects.
• BigInt numbers (requires native BigInt support).

Any other object or primitive are encoded using the standard JSON stringifier.

To support these extra types, a metadata object is added to the encoded JSON string, but only when they are used. Otherwise, the stringified output will be identical to JSON.stringify(). This also mean that the parser will correctly handle plain JSON.

The only requirement for the input, is that it stringifies as an object that does not have a top-level $x property. If the input is likely to contain this property, it should be renamed, or moved to a lower level.

Note: Unlike JSON, the encoded string is not designed to be used in human edited form, but for machine processing.

The implementation allows for new object types to be encoded in the scheme. If the implementation encounters an unknown type when parsing, the input data is ignored, and it is decoded as undefined.