Implementing Mozilla's toSource() method in Internet Explorer

Question

Has anyone implemented Mozilla\'s Object.toSource() method for Internet Explorer and other non-Gecko browsers? I\'m looking for a lightweight way to serialize simple object

Answer 1

You don't have to use toSource(); wrap the code to be serialized in a function that returns the JSON struct, and use function#toString() instead:

var serialized = function () {
    return {
        n: 8,
        o: null,
        b: true,
        s: 'text',
        a: ['a', 'b', 'c'],
        f: function () {
            alert('!')
        }
    }
};
serialized.toString();

See a live demo on jsFiddle.

Answer 2

If matching the exact serialization format of Firefox is not your aim, you could use one of the JavaScript JSON serialization/deserialization libraries listed at http://json.org. Using a standard scheme like JSON may be better than mimicking the proprietary Gecko format.