Support for "pure object references"

[emilianodenis]

Hi,

A nice to have would be a support for pure JSON references.

I mean objects that are simply { $ref: 1 }.

An example:

@jsonObject
export class A {
  constructor() {}

  @jsonMember
  public name: string;

  @jsonMember
  public id: number;
}

@jsonObject
export class B {
  constructor() {}

  @jsonMember
  public prop1: A;

  @jsonMember
  public prop2: A;
}

    const obj: any = {
      $id: 1,
      prop1: {
        $id: 2,
        name: "test1",
        id: 100
      },
      prop2: {
        $id: 3,
        name: "test2",
        id: 101
      }
    };

    const objRef: any = {
      $id: 4,
      prop1: {
        $id: 5,
        name: "test1",
        id: 100
      },
      prop2: { $ref: 5 }
    };

    const res1 = TypedJSON.parse(obj, B);
    const res2 = TypedJSON.parse(objRef, B);

In this case, res1 is properly serialized. But for res2, prop1 is fine while prop2 is an empty object.

Stackblitz with a more complete example: https://stackblitz.com/edit/angular-ivy-yoqexv

[sumbricht]

For anyone blocked by TypedJSON issues: my own software heavily relied on TypedJSON and had to apply numerous hacks for issues in TypedJSON that are not getting fixed. I loved TypedJSON but unfortunately had to move on as there has not been a single fix in 4 years now.

Therefore I created the similarly powerful library json-class-serializer heavily inspired by TypedJSON, which addresses all my issues (and hopefully yours). It's pretty much a drop-in replacement if you don't rely on reflect-metadata, which I'm not supporting (as this was the cause of most of my issues). If you rely on reflect-metadata, just specify the constructors of properties other than string/number/boolean and then it most likely just works.

Please feel free to give it a try if you feel the urge to move away from TypedJSON but don't want to do any heavy re-engineering. And please don't hate on me for the advertisement here as I have contributed to TypedJSON as well and opened many still-open issues :-).

You can find my library at @sumbricht/json-class-serializer and gladly open issues there if you feel something's missing / not working correctly.