How to restore original object/type from JSON?

Question

Its easy to load JSON into an object in javascript using eval or JSON.parse.

But if you have a proper \"class\" like function, how do you get the JSON data into it?<

Answer 1

Many frameworks provide an 'extend' function that will copy fields over from one object to another. You can combine this with JSON.parse to do what you want.

newPerson = new Person();
_.extend(newPerson, JSON.parse(aPersonJSON));

If you don't want to include something like underscore you can always copy over just the extend function or write your own.

Coffeescript example because I was bored:

JSONExtend = (obj, json) ->
  obj[field] = value for own field, value of JSON.parse json
  return obj

class Person
  toString: -> "Hi I'm #{@name} and I'm #{@age} years old."


dude = JSONExtend new Person, '{"name":"bob", "age":27}'
console.log dude.toString()