the criminal act of deliberately setting fire to property
JSON is great until you need to encode an object with circular references:
var obj = {};
obj.self = obj;
JSON.stringify(obj); // throwsThrowing an exception is lame, but even worse is muddling along as if everything is ok:
var a = {};
var b = { foo: 42 };
a.x = a.y = b;
var c = JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(a));
assert.strictEqual(c.x, c.y); // failsWe need an object notation that supports circular and repeated references.
That's where ARSON comes in:
var a = {};
var b = { foo: 42 };
a.x = a.y = b;
var c = ARSON.parse(ARSON.stringify(a));
assert.strictEqual(c.x, c.y); // no problem!ARSON is compact, often even more compact than JSON, because repeated objects are defined only once:
var a = {};
var b = { foo: 42 };
a.x = a.y = b;
ARSON.stringify(a); // [{"x":1,"y":1},{"foo":2},42] vs.
// {"x":{"foo":42},"y":{"foo":42}}