|                                                                                             |  | # structuredClone polyfill
[](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@ungap/structured-clone) [](https://github.com/ungap/structured-clone/actions) [](https://coveralls.io/github/ungap/structured-clone?branch=main)
An env agnostic serializer and deserializer with recursion ability and types beyond *JSON* from the *HTML* standard itself.
  * [Supported Types](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Workers_API/Structured_clone_algorithm#supported_types)    * *not supported yet*: Blob, File, FileList, ImageBitmap, ImageData or others non *JS* types but typed arrays are supported without major issues, but u/int8, u/int16, and u/int32 are the only safely suppored (right now).    * *not possible to implement*: the `{transfer: []}` option can be passed but it's completely ignored.  * [MDN Documentation](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/structuredClone)  * [Serializer](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/structured-data.html#structuredserializeinternal)  * [Deserializer](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/structured-data.html#structureddeserialize)
Serialized values can be safely stringified as *JSON* too, and deserialization resurrect all values, even recursive, or more complex than what *JSON* allows.
### Examples
Check the [100% test coverage](./test/index.js) to know even more.
```js// as default exportimport structuredClone from '@ungap/structured-clone';const cloned = structuredClone({any: 'serializable'});
// as independent serializer/deserializerimport {serialize, deserialize} from '@ungap/structured-clone';
// the result can be stringified as JSON without issues// even if there is recursive data, bigint values,// typed arrays, and so onconst serialized = serialize({any: 'serializable'});
// the result will be a replica of the original objectconst deserialized = deserialize(serialized);```
#### Global Polyfill
Note: Only monkey patch the global if needed. This polyfill works just fine as an explicit import: `import structuredClone from "@ungap/structured-clone"````js// Attach the polyfill as a Global functionimport structuredClone from "@ungap/structured-clone";if (!("structuredClone" in globalThis)) {  globalThis.structuredClone = structuredClone;}
// Or don't monkey patchimport structuredClone from "@ungap/structured-clone"// Just use it in the filestructuredClone()```
**Note**: Do not attach this module's default export directly to the global scope, whithout a conditional guard to detect a native implementation. In environments where there is a native global implementation of `structuredClone()` already, assignment to the global object will result in an infinite loop when `globalThis.structuredClone()` is called. See the example above for a safe way to provide the polyfill globally in your project.
### Extra Features
There is no middle-ground between the structured clone algorithm and JSON:
  * JSON is more relaxed about incompatible values: it just ignores these  * Structured clone is inflexible regarding incompatible values, yet it makes specialized instances impossible to reconstruct, plus it doesn't offer any helper, such as `toJSON()`, to make serialization possible, or better, with specific cases
This module specialized `serialize` export offers, within the optional extra argument, a **lossy** property to avoid throwing when incompatible types are found down the road (function, symbol, ...), so that it is possible to send with less worrying about thrown errors.
```js// as default exportimport structuredClone from '@ungap/structured-clone';const cloned = structuredClone(  {    method() {      // ignored, won't be cloned    },    special: Symbol('also ignored')  },  {    // avoid throwing    lossy: true,    // avoid throwing *and* looks for toJSON    json: true  });```
The behavior is the same found in *JSON* when it comes to *Array*, so that unsupported values will result as `null` placeholders instead.
#### toJSON
If `lossy` option is not enough, `json` will actually enforce `lossy` and also check for `toJSON` method when objects are parsed.
Alternative, the `json` exports combines all features:
```jsimport {stringify, parse} from '@ungap/structured-clone/json';
parse(stringify({any: 'serializable'}));```
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