[Python-ideas] Json object-level serializer (original) (raw)

Greg Ewing greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz
Sat Jul 31 03:17:41 CEST 2010

Antoine Pitrou wrote:

Sure, generic functions as a paradigm appear more powerful, more decoupled, etc.

In this case there's a sense in which using a generic function could be seen as increasing coupling.

Suppose I write a class Foo, and as a convenience to my users, I want to give it the ability to be json-serialised. If that is done using a generic function, then I need to put a call in my module to register it. But that makes my module dependent on the json-serialising module, even for applications which don't use json at all.

The alternative is just to provide the function but don't register it. But using that approach, every application that does use json would be responsible for registering all the functions for all the classes that need to be serialised, including those in library modules that it may not be directly aware of. This doesn't seem like a good situation either.

-- Greg

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