JSON.stringify takes toJSON methods into consideration
Written by Stefan Judis
- Published at
- Updated at
- Reading time
- 1min
This post is part of my Today I learned series in which I share all my web development learnings.
I was reading this great article on JSON
by Valeri Karpov when I discovered something I didn't know before.
You can use JSON
to serialize objects and store them let's say in localStorage
. It turns out that JSON
checks if the object to serialize includes a toJSON
method. If it does it will use this method to evaluate the result of the serialization.
const zoo = {
animals: {
list: ['cat', 'dog', 'duck'],
// toJSON will be called by JSON.stringify
toJSON: () => {
return ['๐ฑ', '๐ถ', '๐ฆ']
}
}
}
console.log(JSON.stringify(zoo, null, 2));
By including a toJSON
method you can manipulate the data that should go into serialization. You can use this functionality to e.g. clean up logs and not store sensitive information in a database. Pretty sweet. ๐
If you want to learn more you can check MDN or have a look at a chapter of Exploring JavaScript written by Axel Rauschmayer.
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Yes? Cool! You might want to check out Web Weekly for more quick learnings. The last edition went out 18 days ago.