Subj : Re: Serializing JavaScript in spidermonkey
To   : netscape.public.mozilla.jseng
From : Brendan Eich <brendan@meer.net>
Date : Wed Dec 31 2003 08:48 am

Chris Zumbrunn wrote:
> Brendan Eich <brendan@meer.net> wrote:
> 
>>In my experience there is no best way, because what hides behind a JS 
>>object can't be expressed in a literal form in the JS language, in full.
> 
> 
> Douglas Crockford's JSON wouldn't do the job? 
> 
> http://www.crockford.com/JSON/index.html

Cool, I hadn't kept up with Douglas's stuff.  That will work for object 
trees, but not graphs in general, or objects with private data that 
cannot be expressed in JS itself (although you could stuff any data into 
a string, base64-encoded or whatever, the problem of getting the private 
data to serialize itself, and calling an appropriate deserializing ctor 
remains, and requires native code extensions).

/be

.