Storable style de-serializing for JSON structures

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Monks,

Wisdom I seek ..

I am receiving JSON serialized objects for some perl classes. I can easily de-serialize the JSON structure back into perl data structure - hash/array using standard JSON modules and possibly into a blessed reference.

However, when the serialized class represents objects and sub-objects, I have no way to automatically create blessed reference for sub-objects.

Storable module can easily de-serialize and create blessed references for sub-objects automatically. Is there a way to do the same for JSON?

Gracias Dece

Comment on Storable style de-serializing for JSON structures

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Re: Storable style de-serializing for JSON structures by Corion (Patriarch) on Oct 11, 2009 at 08:32 UTC
As far as I understand the idea of JSON, it's supposed to be cross-language, and hence doesn't really have a concept of "classes". At least JSON does not want to serialize blessed objects by default, and I guess that there is no way to (de)serialize whole class trees. Maybe you can store the class name as a separate field for each object and upon deserialization rebless all elements?	[reply]
Re^2: Storable style de-serializing for JSON structures by decebel (Acolyte) on Oct 11, 2009 at 14:32 UTC
Thanks for reply. I agree with your suggestion	[reply]
Re: Storable style de-serializing for JSON structures by Joost (Canon) on Oct 11, 2009 at 22:47 UTC
JSON doesn't support anything but "dumb" data structures. No class instances or anything like that. Storable and Data::Dumper and others just produce string data, and can serialize perl objects. If all you care about is something that's technically JSON and you only pass it to other perl code, you can put the serialized string into a JSON attribute and retrieve it on the other side. The real question would then be: why use JSON at all? "What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"	[reply]