From fa8265badad1dfe3df5d1aa6e561a3698e4b1338 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: James Halliday <substack@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 21:59:31 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] readme with json example

---
 README.markdown | 52 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 52 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 README.markdown

diff --git a/README.markdown b/README.markdown
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+Description
+===========
+Traverse and transform objects by visiting every node on a recursive walk.
+
+Examples
+========
+
+JSON Scrubbing Example
+----------------------
+
+Suppose you have a complex data structure that you want to send to another
+process with JSON over a network socket. If the data structure has references to
+functions in it, JSON will convert functions inside Arrays to null and ignore
+keys that map to functions inside Objects.
+
+    > JSON.stringify([ 7, 8, function () {}, 9, { b : 4, c : function () {} } ])
+    '[7,8,null,9,{"b":4}]'
+
+If these nested functions are important, it'd be nice if they could be collected
+and replaced with some placeholder value that JSON can encapsulate. This sort of
+transform and collection might be useful for
+[an asynchronous remote method invocation library
+](http://github.com/substack/dnode), for instance.
+
+This example scrubs functions out of an arbitrary data structure so that the
+structure may be JSON-ified. The functions are also collected for some other
+use.
+    
+    var sys = require('sys');
+    var Traverse = require('traverse').Traverse;
+    
+    var id = 54;
+    var callbacks = {};
+    var obj = { moo : function () {}, foo : [2,3,4, function () {}] };
+    
+    var scrubbed = Traverse(obj).modify(function (x) {
+        if (x instanceof Function) {
+            callbacks[id] = { id : id, f : x, path : this.path };
+            this.update('[Function]');
+            id++;
+        }
+    }).get();
+    
+    sys.puts(JSON.stringify(scrubbed));
+    sys.puts(sys.inspect(callbacks));
+    
+    /* Output:
+        {"moo":"[Function]","foo":[2,3,4,"[Function]"]}
+        { '54': { id: 54, f: [Function], path: [ 'moo' ] }
+        , '55': { id: 55, f: [Function], path: [ 'foo', '3' ] }
+        }
+    */