[swift-evolution] Support for a KeyCodingStrategy option in JSONEncoder and JSONDecoder

[Morten Bek Ditlevsen]

Hi all,
At work we have just added Codable support for a whole bunch of model
objects in our code base.
Many places we have added CodingKeys enumeration in order to convert the
camel cased property names to snake case for our JSON keys.
As an experiment I have tried adding a KeyCodingStrategy option to a copy
of the JSONEncoder and JSONDecoder implementations.
This is currently an enumeration with the following values
.original
.snakeCase
.custom((String) -> String)

I just extended CodingKey as follows:
extension CodingKey {
    func stringValue(with encodingStrategy:
StructuralEncoder.KeyEncodingStrategy) -> String {
        switch encodingStrategy {
        case .original:
            return stringValue
        case .snakeCase:
            let pattern = "([a-z0-9])([A-Z])"
            let regex = try! NSRegularExpression(pattern: pattern, options:
[])
            let range = NSRange(location: 0, length:
stringValue.characters.count)
            return regex.stringByReplacingMatches(in: stringValue, options:
[], range: range, withTemplate: "$1_$2").lowercased()
        case .custom(let t):
            return t(stringValue)
        }
    }
}

and then I replaced all references to key.stringValue with
key.stringValue(with: self.encoder.options.keyCodingStrategy)

This seems to work very nicely.

So my question is: Do anyone else see the benefit of such an addition to
the JSONEncoder and JSONDecoder?

The downside as I see it, is that the current CodingKeys are guaranteed to
be unique by the compiler, and it would be possible to create collisions by
using key name transforms.
Is this downside bigger than the gains?

One advantage is that one could argue that one CodingKey strategy may not
fit all serialization mechanisms. For instance one might wish to have upper
camel cased keys in Plists (just an example) and snake case in JSON. This
method could easily support this, while the current CodingKeys strategy
cannot...

Looking forward to hearing feedback.

Sincerely,
/morten
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/attachments/20171019/ef1e761d/attachment.html>