Brainstorming JSON Serialization

Brainstorming JSON and JSON-like (e.g. msgpack) serialization

Amongst the challenges:

• Expressing class
• Expressing persistent references.
• Expressing cycles

Some ideas I've thought about.

• For class, oid, and serial, use regular names.
• References are object with a single "->" property, who's value identifies the object being referenced.
  • Integer ids are internal references.
  • Other ids are external/persistent references.
• When an object is referenced multiple times internally, it's wrapped in an object with properties __shared_id__, with an integer value assigning the id, and __shared_value__ who's value is the shared data,

In this example:

   {"__class__": "somemodule.Foo",
    "_p_oid": "1231ab",
    "_p_serial": "1234567890abcd",
    "x": 1,
    "parent": {"->": "1231aa"},
    "y": {"__shared_id__: 0, "__shared_value__": ["a", 3, {"->": 0}]
    }

parent
  A regular property who's value is a persistent reference.

y
  A regular property with a shared list that refers to itself,