tcl-oo-json

TCL 8.6+ Object (De)serializer

Introduction

tcloojson takes care of serializing (and soon deserializing) of TCL objects for you. All you need to do is mixin the appropriate class and you are ready to go! tcloojson supports the following data types:

Object - must mixin JsonSerializer in order to be processed.
String
Numeric Types
Array - is converted to a JSON object.
List - is converted to a String, unless stated otherwise.

# a simple class definition
oo::class create MyClass {
    constructor {} {
        my variable iAmAString
        my variable iAmAnInt
        my variable iAmAFloat
        set iAmAString "string!"
        set iAmAFloat 1.5
        set iAmAnInt 2
    }
}

# mixin the JsonSerializer
oo::define MyClass {
	mixin org::geekosphere::json::JsonSerializer
}

set myInstance [MyClass new]

puts [$myInstance toJSON]

Results in:

{
  "__INSTANCE": "OBJ|::MyClass",
  "iAmAnInt": 2,
  "iAmAFloat": 1.5,
  "iAmAString": "string!"
}

Refer to example.tcl for a more complex example, that covers all available features.

Explicit / Implicit Meta Data

tcloojson uses meta data to (de)serialize objects. The following types of meta data are known to tcloojson:

Name	Purpose	Type	Retention
__INSTANCE	transports object class type	implicit	yes
__LISTS	explicitly declare lists	explicit	no
__IGNORE	ignoring fields	explicit	no

__INSTANCE

The __INSTANCE field must not be declared by a class explicitly, if a class contains an __INSTANCE field, (de)serialization will fail. The __INSTANCE field is used by tcloojson interally to transport object class data, which would otherwise be lost by the serialization process.

__LISTS

Since all TCL lists are strings and most strings are valid TCL lists, the user needs to explicitly define which strings are to be treated as lists. The __LISTS field has to be declared implicitly by the user. It contains a TCL list of all TCL lists contained in the class, that need to be treated as lists during the serialization process. The __LISTS field will NOT be serialized and will therefore not appear in the generated JSON. If a TCL list is declared as a list, it is serialized as a JSON array.

__IGNORE

The __IGNORE list contains all fields that should be ignore. As with __LISTS, users must explicitly ignore fields. The __IGNORE field is not persisted to JSON.

License

Apache 2.0

siyb / tcl-oo-json