What is the proper way to serialize / deserialize objects?

[treycarroll]

I would dearly love to avoid reinventing the wheel here, but though this code does not throw errors, neither does it actually work:

var x = JSON.stringify({Texas:'Austin',Michigan:'Lansing'});
var y = JSON.parse(x);
gs.log(y.Texas);//prints undefined instead of Austin

So instead I am doing this:

//Accepts a string representation of an object: "{prop1:'aaa',prop2:'bbb'}"
//Returns an object with the specified properties
function toObject(stringifiedObject) {
       if (typeof stringifiedObject !== 'string') {
               throw "Parameter error. toObject() only accepts a string.";
       }
       var guts = stringifiedObject.match(/^\{([^\}]*)\}$/);
       var properties = guts[1].split(',');
       var obj = {};
       for (var i = 0; i < properties.length; i++) {
               var prop = properties[i].trim().split(':');
               obj[prop[0].trim()] = prop[1].trim().replaceAll('\'','').replaceAll('"','');
       }
       return obj;
}

//Accepts an object and returns a string similar to a stringified JSON object
//ignores function type properties
function stringify(obj) {
       var str = '{';
       for (var k in obj) {
               if (typeof this[k] != 'function') {
                       str += k + ':\'' + obj[k] + '\',';
               }
       }
       str = str.substring(0, str.length - 1);//remove the unneeded comma
       str += '}';
       return str;
}

gs.log(toObject(stringify({ Texas: 'Austin', Michigan: 'Lansing' })).Texas);//correctly outputs Austin

Yes, it's crude and only supports one level of properties.     What is a better way?       Even if I could find helpful library with similar functionality (like underscore js), where do you add such scripts so that they'll be available in BRs and Inbound Email Actions?     I learned the hard way that adding them in UI Scripts and making them global will bring down your instance!

Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Trey Carroll

[treycarroll]

By the way, the reason that I'm doing this is that I'm finding that Email Notifications seem to only allow passing of strings into Parm1 and Parm2.     Thus, I have to re-hydrate my objects once I get event.ParmN in the mail_script.

If there is a better way to get a live object into a mail script I would love to know to do it without going to this trouble.

BTW, there was a typo in my code:

this[k] //should have been obj[k]

My final version of the code looked like this:

var u_GmfObjectSerializer = Class.create();

u_GmfObjectSerializer.prototype = {

       initialize: function () {

       },



       //Accepts a string representation of an object: "{prop1:'aaa',prop2:'bbb'}"

       //Returns an object with the specified properties

       //Replaces new lines with <br/> if the 2nd param is true

       parseToObject: function (stringifiedObject, replaceNewlineWithBr) {

               if (typeof stringifiedObject !== 'string') {

                       throw "Parameter error. toObject() only accepts a string.";

               }



               var matchBtwBraces = stringifiedObject.match(/^\{([^\}]*)\}$/);

               if (matchBtwBraces != undefined && matchBtwBraces.length == 2) {

                       var obj = {};

                       var m;

                       while (m = /([^:]+):['"]([^'"]*)['"],?/g.exec(matchBtwBraces[1])) {

                               var key = m[1];

                               var val = m[2];

                               obj[key] = (replaceNewlineWithBr) ? val.replace(/(?:\r\n|\r|\n)/g, '<br/>') : val;

                       }

               } else {

                       throw "Parameter error. String was found to be improperly formated.   Must start and end with a curly brace.";

               }

               return obj;

       },



       //Accepts an object and returns a string similar to a stringified JSON object

       //ignores function type properties

       stringify: function (obj) {

               var str = '{';

               for (var k in obj) {

                       if (typeof obj[k] != 'function') {

                               str += k + ':\'' + obj[k] + '\',';

                       }

               }

               str = str.substring(0, str.length - 1);//remove the unneeded comma

               str += '}';

               return str;

       },

       type: 'u_GmfObjectSerializer'

}

[Brad Tilton · Accepted solution]

Hi Trey,

There's a Script Include called JSON which has some methods to encode and decode JSON server side. The following should work for you:

var j = new JSON()

var x = j.encode({Texas: 'Austin', Michigan: 'Lansing'});

var y = j.decode(x);

gs.log(y.Texas);

[Michael_Nau]

Just wanted to add that the syntax editor will throw a warning if you do it this way...which, nevertheless, works

[Slava Savitsky]

Here is an explanation and a way to work around the warning:

Andrew Kincaid (SN) on Twitter: "Ignore "Do not use JSON as a constructor" in #ServiceNow. JSLint as...

Andrew Kincaid (SN) on Twitter: "Follow-up to last tweet: For server-side #ServiceNow code, use "var...