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jQuery Serialize Object

As seen on StackOverflow: Convert forms to JSON LIKE A BOSS.

Adds the method serializeObject to jQuery, to perform complex form serialization into JavaScript objects.

The current implementation relies in jQuery.serializeArray() to grab the form attributes and then create the object using the input name attributes.

This means it will serialize the inputs that are supported by .serializeArray(), that use the standard W3C rules for successful controls to determine which inputs should be included; in particular:

Installation

option 1: NPM

$ npm install form-serializer

option 2: Bower

$ bower install jquery-serialize-object

option 3: Manual

Copy the dist/jquery.serialize-object.min.js to your project.

You can include the plugin in the HEAD element or at the bottom of your BODY tag. Wherever you choose to add it, it must be included after your jQuery.

<head>
  <script src="jquery.min.js"></script>
  <script src="jquery.serialize-object.min.js"></script>
</head>

2.0

Version 2.0 takes jquery-serialize-object into maturity. It is now backed by a full test suite so you can be confident that it will work in your web app.

Moving ahead, on top of core serialization, .serializeObject will support correct serializaton for boolean and number values, resulting valid types for both cases.

Look forward to these >= 2.5.0

Update: >= 2.4.0 now serializes <input type="checkbox"> as a boolean. See the test for specific behavior.

API

Given a basic HTML form

<form id="contact">
  <input name="user[email]" value="jsmith@example.com">
  <input name="user[pets][]" type="checkbox" value="cat" checked>
  <input name="user[pets][]" type="checkbox" value="dog" checked>
  <input name="user[pets][]" type="checkbox" value="bird">
  <input type="submit">
</form>

.serializeObject — serializes the selected form into a JavaScript object

$('form#contact').serializeObject();
//=> {user: {email: "jsmith@example.com", pets: ["cat", "dog"]}}

.serializeJSON — serializes the selected form into JSON

$('form#contact').serializeJSON();
//=> '{"user":{"email":"jsmith@example.com","pets":["cat","dog"]}}'

FormSerializer.patterns — modify the patterns used to match field names

Many of you have requested to allow - in field names or use . to nest keys. You can now configure these to your heart's content.

Hyphen example

$.extend(FormSerializer.patterns, {
  validate: /^[a-z][a-z0-9_-]*(?:\[(?:\d*|[a-z0-9_-]+)\])*$/i,
  key:      /[a-z0-9_-]+|(?=\[\])/gi,
  named:    /^[a-z0-9_-]+$/i
});

Dot-notation example

$.extend(FormSerializer.patterns, {
  validate: /^[a-z][a-z0-9_]*(?:\.[a-z0-9_]+)*(?:\[\])?$/i
});

Validating and Key parsing

Key styles

Tests

If you have node.js installed, as a convenience, you can run

$ npm test

If you do not have node installed, simply

$ open ./test/test.html

CoffeeScript

CoffeeScript has been dropped for >= 2.0.0. If members of the community would like to support this, please feel free to add a CoffeeScript version.

If you'd like to use the the 1.0.0 version, it is still available here.

Contributing

See : CONTRIBUTING