Customizing JSON parser and stringifier

I have always wanted JSON.parse and JSON.stringify to deal with custom objects, such as Date and Set.

BTW, I have successfully done so in two languages, Python and JavaScript (TypeScript).

In Python, you have to override default and object_hook for json.dumps and json.loads respectively.

import json
from datetime import datetime


def default(obj):
    if isinstance(obj, datetime):
        return str(obj)

    raise TypeError


class ComplexEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):
    def default(self, obj):
        try:
            return default(obj)
        except TypeError:
            return super().default(self, obj)


def object_hook(d):
    date_formats = [
        "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f"
    ]

    for k, v in d.items():
        if isinstance(v, str):
            for f in date_formats:
                try:
                    d[k] = datetime.strptime(v, f)
                    break
                except ValueError:
                    pass

    return d


if _<i>name_</i> == "__main__":
    print(json.dumps(datetime.now(), cls=ComplexEncoder))
    print(json.dumps(datetime.now(), default=default))
    print(json.loads(json.dumps({"a": datetime.now()}, default=default), object_hook=object_hook))

For JavaScript, there is Object.prototype.toJSON and reviver. You can override both, like this,

Date.prototype.toJSON = function() {
  return this.toISOString();
};

function reviver(key: string, value: any) {
  if (typeof value === "string") {
    if (/^\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}T\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}\.\d+\S+$/.test(value)) {
      return new Date(value)
    }
  }
  return value;
}

console.log(JSON.stringify(new Date()));
console.log(JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(new Date()), reviver));

Indeed, if you want to handle Python's datetime string, you might need moment.js library.