Encode Time objects as ISO8601 for compatibility with JS's Date.parse()

[paddor]

I've read about the recent performance gains in this gem. Congratulations!

It's nothing urgent but eventually I'd love to switch from Oj to this gem. Currently I can't do that because Time objects are not encoded as ISO8601, which is what Javascript's Date.parse() expects.

Specifically, I've been using these Oj options:

        OJ_OPTIONS = {
          mode:             :custom,
          symbol_keys:      true,
          time_format:      :xmlschema, # ISO 8601, compatible with JavaScript's Date.parse()
          allow_gc:         false,
          second_precision: 3,
          cache_keys:       true,
          cache_str:        35

          # NOTE: MUST NOT use use_to_json. Because some gem requires 'json' (and also the specs), Time#to_json gets defined
          #       and will be used by Oj. It's not ISO8601.
          # use_to_json:      true,
        }

Would it be possible to add options time_format: :xmlschema and second_precision: N to JSON.generate?

[paddor]

Actually I'm not even sure if this issue makes sense. Before generating JSON, I have to convert Ruby objects to Hashes anyway, so that's where I could convert Time objects to ISO8601 strings. But so far I've been relying on Oj to do this for me and it also converts any stray Time-objects that my #to_json_hash might not know about.

Let me know what you think. Thanks.

[paddor]

So I've been thinking a little bit about this. I've come up with something like this:

require 'json'
require 'time'

def sanitize(node)
  case node
  when Time
    node = node.iso8601(3)
  when Array
    node = node.map do |obj| 
      sanitize(obj)
    end
  when Hash
    node = node.transform_values do |value|
      sanitize(value)
    end
  end

  node
end


def dump(obj)
  ::JSON.dump sanitize(obj)
end

It works, but is obviously not very performant.

The other obvious solution would be:

class Time
  def to_json(*a)
    iso8601(3).to_json(*a)
  end
end

But since it's monkey patching, it just doesn't feel right.

Refinements can't be used because the limited scope. PR #718 seems to work on a solution for this problem.

[byroot]

But since it's monkey patching, it just doesn't feel right.

Yes, that's why I hate the to_json interface, it assume there is one and only one way to serialize a given class in JSON, hence the work on JSON::Encoder.

We could change the default behavior of Time#to_json, but it has been this way since so long that it's certain to cause a lot of problems to users, so I don't think it's a good idea. It's much better to move toward non-global APIs.

I leave this open for now and probably consider it solved once JSON::Encoder is finalized.

[paddor]

Thanks for the input. For now the the monkey patch will have to do. Closing this now and looking forward to the JSON::Encoder with great anticipation.