How to deterministically verify that a JSON object hasn't been modified?

Question

According to MDN documentation for JSON.stringify:

Properties of non-array objects are not guaranteed to be stringified in any particular order. Do

Answer 1

Recently I've had a similar use case. Following code has no dependencies and works for all browsers:

function stringify(obj) {
  var type = Object.prototype.toString.call(obj);

  // IE8 <= 8 does not have array map
  var map = Array.prototype.map || function map(callback) {
    var ret = [];
    for (var i = 0; i < this.length; i++) {
      ret.push(callback(this[i]));
    }
    return ret;
  };

  if (type === '[object Object]') {
    var pairs = [];
    for (var k in obj) {
      if (!obj.hasOwnProperty(k)) continue;
      pairs.push([k, stringify(obj[k])]);
    }
    pairs.sort(function(a, b) { return a[0] < b[0] ? -1 : 1 });
    pairs = map.call(pairs, function(v) { return '"' + v[0] + '":' + v[1] });
    return '{' + pairs + '}';
  }

  if (type === '[object Array]') {
    return '[' + map.call(obj, function(v) { return stringify(v) }) + ']';
  }

  return JSON.stringify(obj);
};

stringify([{b: {z: 5, c: 2, a: {z: 1, b: 2}}, a: 1}, [1, 2, 3]])

'[{"a":1,"b":{"a":{"b":2,"z":1},"c":2,"z":5}},[1,2,3]]'

stringify([{a: 1, b:{z: 5, c: 2, a: {b: 2, z: 1}}}, [1, 2, 3]])

'[{"a":1,"b":{"a":{"b":2,"z":1},"c":2,"z":5}},[1,2,3]]'