codables

Codables

High-performance, no-dependencies, extensible, and declarative "anything to/from JSON" serializer.

Throw your data at it - open playground

Read the docs

Key Features

• ⚡️ High-performance: ~3x faster than SuperJSON (see benchmark)
• 🔌 Extensible: By default handles almost every built-in JavaScript type. Easy to extend with custom handled types.
• 📝 Declarative: Modern decorators allowing you to mark "what to serialize", not "how to serialize it"
• 🎯 Zero dependencies: Fully standalone, no external dependencies. 7.3KB gziped.
• 🔒 Type Safety: Full TypeScript support with autocompletion and type inference
• ✅ Well tested: Every feature is covered by tests. It passes most of SuperJSON tests moved into Codables (including plenty of edge cases)
• 🔄 Framework agnostic: Works with any JavaScript/TypeScript project
• 🛡️ Secure: Built-in protection against prototype pollution

Installation

npm install codables
yarn add codables
pnpm add codables

Quick start

JSON Serialization

Extend JSON to handle JavaScript types that JSON can't serialize:

import { encode, decode } from "codables";

const data = {
  date: new Date("2025-01-01"),
  set: new Set(["a", "b", "c"]),
  map: new Map([["key", "value"]]),
  bigint: BigInt("1234567890123456789"),
  regex: /hello/gi,
  url: new URL("https://example.com"),
};

const encoded = encode(data);
// {
//   date: { $$Date: "2025-01-01T00:00:00.000Z" },
//   set: { $$Set: ["a", "b", "c"] },
//   map: { $$Map: [["key", "value"]] },
//   bigint: { $$BigInt: "1234567890123456789" },
//   regex: { $$RegExp: "/hello/gi" },
//   url: { $$URL: "https://example.com/" }
// }

const decoded = decode(encoded);
// decoded.date instanceof Date === true
// decoded.set instanceof Set === true
// All types preserved!

Declarative Class Serialization

Eliminate the dual-format problem with modern decorators

What declarative means here?

It means you mark "what to serialize", not "how to serialize it"

import { codableClass, codable, Coder } from "codables";

@codableClass("Player")
class Player {
  @codable() name: string;
  @codable() score: number;

  // Note: constructor is not needed for Codables to work, it is here for convenience of creating instances.
  constructor(data: Pick<Player, "name" | "score">) {
    this.name = data.name;
    this.score = data.score;
  }
}

@codableClass("GameState")
class GameState {
  @codable() players: Set<Player> = new Set();
  @codable() createdAt = new Date();
  @codable() activePlayer: Player | null = null;

  addPlayer(player: Player) {
    this.players.add(player);
    this.activePlayer = player;
  }
}

// Create a custom coder instance
const coder = new Coder([GameState]);

// Use your classes naturally
const gameState = new GameState();
gameState.addPlayer(new Player({ name: "Alice", score: 100 }));

// Serialize directly - no conversion logic needed!
const encoded = coder.encode(gameState);
const decoded = coder.decode<GameState>(encoded);
// All types, references, and circular dependencies preserved!

Note: for classes to be automatically serialized, they need to have memberwise constructor (eg the same way like Swift Codable structs work). Read more about it here.

Built-in Types

Codables automatically handles JavaScript types that standard JSON cannot serialize:

JavaScript Type	Example Output
Date	{ $$Date: "2025-01-01T00:00:00.000Z" }
BigInt	{ $$BigInt: "1234567890123456789" }
Set	{ $$Set: ["a", "b", "c"] }
Map	{ $$Map: [["key", "value"]] }
RegExp	{ $$RegExp: "/hello/gi" }
Symbol	{ $$Symbol: "test" }
URL	{ $$URL: "https://example.com/" }
URLSearchParams	{ $$URLSearchParams: "foo=bar&baz=qux" }
Error	{ $$Error: "Something went wrong" }
undefined	"$$undefined"
Typed Arrays	{ $$uint8array: [1, 2, 3] }
Special Numbers	"$$NaN", "$$Infinity", "$$-Infinity", "$$-0"

Read more about supported types →

Of course, you can extend it with custom types.

Performance

Codables is heavily optimized for performance:

• Encoding: ~3-3.5x faster than SuperJSON across all data sizes and types
• Decoding: Comparable to or faster than SuperJSON depending on the data type

View detailed benchmarks →

API Overview

Core Functions

import { encode, decode, stringify, parse, clone } from "codables";

// Basic encoding/decoding
const encoded = encode(data);
const decoded = decode(encoded);

// With JSON stringification
const jsonString = stringify(data);
const restored = parse(jsonString);

// Deep clone maintaining all types and references equality
const foo = { foo: "foo" };
const original = [foo, foo];
const cloned = clone(original);
// cloned === original; // false
// cloned[0] === original[0]; // false -> nested clone
// cloned[0] === cloned[1]; // true -> reference equality is preserved

Declarative Class Serialization

import { codableClass, codable, Coder } from "codables";

@codableClass("MyClass")
class MyClass {
  @codable() property: string;
}

const coder = new Coder([MyClass]);
const encoded = coder.encode(instance);
const decoded = coder.decode<MyClass>(encoded);

Custom Types

You can also use lower-level API to create custom types and encode/decode them manually.

import { codableType, Coder } from "codables";

const $$custom = codableType(
  "CustomType", // name of the type
  (value) => value instanceof CustomType, // how to detect some value should be encoded using this type
  (instance) => instance.data, // how to encode the value (might return rich data like `Map` or `Set`, or even other custom types)
  (data) => new CustomType(data), // how to recreate the value from the encoded data
);

const coder = new Coder([$$custom]);
// or
const coder = new Coder();
coder.register($$custom);

Security

Codables includes built-in security measures:

• Prototype Pollution Protection: Automatically filters dangerous properties (constructor, __proto__, prototype)
• Safe Object Creation: Creates objects without modifying prototypes
• Format Safety: Automatic collision detection and escaping

Read more about security features →

Comparisons

Benchmark vs SuperJSON

You can run these benchmarks yourself by downloading the repository and running yarn codables bench. The benchmark code is available in benchmark.bench.ts.

Plain JSON Data (6MB)

Operation	Preserve refs	Copy refs
Encode	🟢 3.68x faster than SuperJSON	🟢 6.85x faster than SuperJSON
Decode	🟢 1.29x faster than SuperJSON	🟢 1.28x faster than SuperJSON

Complex Data Structures

It includes deeply nested objects, with repeating references, Sets, Maps, and Dates

Dataset	Encode		Decode
	Preserve refs	Copy refs	Preserve refs	Copy refs
Small	🟢 3.89x faster	🟢 6.98x faster	🟢 1.68x faster	🟢 1.66x faster
Average	🟢 4.20x faster	🟢 5.06x faster	🟢 1.16x faster	🟢 1.05x faster
Large	🟢 4.01x faster	🟢 7.54x faster	🟢 1.19x faster	🟢 1.83x faster
Huge	🟢 4.08x faster	🟢 6.43x faster	🟢 1.31x faster	🟢 2.37x faster

Benchmark was run on a MacBook Pro M3 Max with 128GB of RAM.

Migration from SuperJSON

For simple JSON serialization, Codables is almost a drop-in replacement for SuperJSON.

For custom types, please read about custom types in JSON Serialization section.

// Before
import { stringify, parse } from "superjson";
const serialized = stringify(data);
const deserialized = parse(serialized);

// After
import { stringify, parse } from "codables";
const serialized = stringify(data);
const deserialized = parse(serialized);

Read complete comparison guide →

Documentation

• Quick Start - Get up and running quickly
• JSON Serialization - Handle complex JavaScript types
• Declarative Serialization - Serialize classes with decorators
• Performance - Benchmark results and optimization
• Security - Security features and best practices
• Recipes - Real-world examples and integrations

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

• Fork the repository
• Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
• Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature')
• Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
• Open a Pull Request

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.