Serialization of RegExp

Question

So, I was interested to find that JSON.stringify reduces a RegExp to an empty object-literal (fiddle):

JSON.stringify(/^[0-9]+$/) // \"{}\"
         


        

Answer 1

Here's how I solved this issue:

Serialize it as a string:

var pattern = /foobar/i;
var serialized = JSON.stringify(pattern.toString());

Then rehydrate it using another regex:

var fragments = serialized.match(/\/(.*?)\/([a-z]*)?$/i);
var rehydrated = new RegExp(fragments[1], fragments[2] || '');

Preserves the pattern and flags - hope this helps someone!