- Start Date: 2015-12-03
- RFC PR: (leave this empty)
- Refract Issue: (leave this empty)
This proposes we reserve the keyword element for all objects in a Refract
tree.
This allows us to not worry about domain-specific knowledge when parsing a
Refract tree. Right now, we have to rely on something out of band to tell us
when something MAY be refracted, but if we rely on the reserved keyword
element, we can know if an object is a normal object or a Refract Object.
Note: we are already doing this in Minim.
This RFC proposes to reserve element in the entire tree. This means that
anywhere the property element is found, a parser SHOULD treat the object as a
Refract Object.
This allows for us to know when an object is a Refract Object or not. It also
allows for us only refract things that need to be refracted when serializing.
In this situation, for example, the key property of a Member Element would
not need to refracted if it is a string.
We can then follow this proposed rule when serializing: if an element is a primitive element and has no attributes or meta data, the element MAY be left as a primitive value. This rule SHOULD go into the RFC where we define serialization rules.
This means that no user can ever use the property element. We could provide
ways to get around this with some identifier, like _isRefract: false, but this
just makes it more confusing.
We can provide a special meta property that tells you if something is
Refract or not. This way, we could look for obj.meta.isRefracted to know if
it is Refracted. This feels very forced.
So as to not pollute the entire tree with reserving element everywhere, we
could only reserve it in meta and attributes. This creates a special
parsing rule, though, and may provide more headaches than it prevents.
None at the moment.