dartson 1.0.0-alpha

Dartson is a Dart library that can be used to serialize Dart objects into a JSON string and vice versa. It uses the new builder infrastructure.

dartson

Dartson is a dart library which converts Dart Objects into their JSON representation. It helps you keep your code clean of fromJSON and toJSON functions by providing a builder which provides the serialization mappings.

Usage

Add the following lines to your pubspec.yaml in order to use dartson:

dependencies:
  dartson: ^1.0.0
  
dev_dependencies:
  build_runner: ^0.10.0

Dartson is using a central serializer instead of generated serializers for each object, therefore create a central file which refers the objects that need to be serialized:

import 'package:dartson/dartson.dart';
import 'package:some_dependency/some_class.dart';

import 'my_class.dart';
import 'some_class.dart';

@Serializer(
  entities: [
    MyClass,
    SomeClass,
  ],
)
final Dartson<Map<String, dynamic>> serializer = _serializer$dartson;

Dartson encodes and decodes into a serializable Map (Map<String, dynamic>) by default. In order to encode and decode into a json string (in previous versions done by using Dartson.JSON) directly, use the codec property within the Serializer annotation.

import 'dart:convert';

import 'package:dartson/dartson.dart';
import 'package:some_dependency/some_class.dart';

import 'my_class.dart';
import 'some_class.dart';

@Serializer(
  entities: [
    MyClass,
    SomeClass,
  ],
  codec: json,
)
final Dartson<String> serializer = _serializer$dartson;

Writting custom TypeTransformers

Transformers are used to encode / decode none serializable types that shouldn't be treated as objects / lists (for example DateTime).

/// A simple DateTime transformer which uses the toString() method.
class DateTimeParser implements TypeTransformer<String, DateTime> {
  // Make sure to add a constant constructor, because dartson will initiate all tranformers
  // as constant to improve dart2js compilation.
  const DateTimeParser();
  DateTime decode(String value) => DateTime.parse(value);
  String encode(DateTime value) => value.toString();
}

In order to use the TypeTransformer you need to register the transformer for the serializer:

import 'package:dartson/dartson.dart';
import 'package:dartson/transformers/date_time.dart';

import 'my_class.dart';

@Serializer(
  entities: [
    MyClass,
  ],
  transformers: [
    DateTimeParser,
  ],
)
final Dartson serializer = _serializer$dartson;

Roadmap for 1.0.0 alpha/beta

• First alpha release evaluates and tests the reuse of json_serializable (refactorings during the alpha/beta will be necessary)
• Additional functionality from proposals will be ported
• Looking for feedback in regards of usability from users
• Further benchmarking of potential bottlenecks because of single point of
  the builder

Further features planned

• See doc/proposal for general features
• Add tool to generate serializer.dart based on serializer.decode<T>() and serializer.encode(T) usage
• Add analyzer plugin to detect potential issues of used entities which are not present in the serializer definition