Add an option to explicitly call toJson when generating serialization code

[jmrboosties]

So rummaging through some older issues, I found that the expected way to handle an structure like:

User
---List<Favorites>

Is to do something like this:

Map<String, dynamic> jsonObject = json.decode(json.encode(user)); //json is from dart:convert

Instead of the normal user.toJson which works with objects without other nested objects inside of them. This isn't a huge deal, but it just makes the code look a little weird. If there's a better way to do this please let me know. Thanks!

[kevmoo]

Right now we DON'T call toJson on nested objects when we write toJson – because this is done by jsonEncode for us.

We could certainly add an option to explicitly call toJson in these cases, though.

[jmrboosties]

Ok so by design (right now) toJson should only work with flat structures. Yea a way with an annotation or something to have it go through each layer (how Gson works) would be cool. Thanks!

[kevmoo]

toJson should only work with flat structures

What do you mean here?

[jmrboosties]

Like in the example you give in the readme, an object like:

@JsonSerializable(nullable: false)
class Person extends Object with _$PersonSerializerMixin {
  final String firstName;
  final String lastName;
  final DateTime dateOfBirth;
}

should use toJson to convert to Map<String, dynamic> because the structure goes only one layer deep:

{
  "first_name": "something",
  "dob": "05-27-18"
}

But an object like:

{
  "names": {
    "first": "indiana",
    "last": "jones"
  }
}

Requires doing jsonDecode(jsonEncode(object)) to get that Map<String, dynamic> converstion completed. I'm using "flat" here to describe a json object without other objects inside of it, maybe that's not the best phrasing.