Implement shim/polyfil for structuredClone()

[VenelinBakalov]

Description

It is a common task that we need to deep clone an object and change it's values without affecting the original. It might be useful to implement a shim/polyfil for structuredClone() so that we have that function out of the box. This would lead to more consistency and simplicity across the different approaches of implementing similar solution (most of which actually do not deep clone the object and lead to issues and bugs later down the line).

• the options.trasfer array implementation is nice to have but not a must

Alternatives

Additional Context

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/structuredClone

It can be something as simple as

        if (source === undefined || source === null) {
            throw new Error("Source value is mandatory.");
        }
        return JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(source));

Note that this has some restrictions, e.g. works mainly for simple objects

[Indy-rbo]

Recently ran into this and would love a polyfill for it! Preferably something close/similar to https://github.com/ungap/structured-clone

While I don't see much added value in the JSON implementation, I would like to request that in that case the function definition is overridden as well (if you have a method for doing that in the Build Tools).
Otherwise this implementation might confuse users when the behavior differs from the behavior of the identically named web API function.

Something like:

declare global {
  /**
   * Polyfill for {@link https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/structuredClone|`structuredClone`}
   * by calling `JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(value))`
   *
   * Warning: This polyfill works differently than `structuredClone`.
   *
   * It may not work as expected when dealing with complex types like:
   * 
   * - Dates
   * - functions
   * - undefined
   * - Infinity
   * - RegExps
   * - Maps
   * - Sets
   * - Blobs
   * - FileLists
   * - ImageDatas
   * - Sparse Arrays
   * - Typed Arrays
   * - Circular references
   */
  function structuredClone<T> (
    value: T,
    transfer?: { transfer: any[] },
  ): T
}

Which gives this hover info:

(might be a bit verbose but it's informative :))

---

As noted in the docblock:
The stringify approach doesn't work with:
Dates, functions, undefined, Infinity, RegExps, Maps, Sets, Blobs, FileLists, ImageDatas, sparse Arrays, Typed Arrays, circular references or other complex types within an object.

Some examples where the JSON approach works different:

{
  string: 'string',
  number: 123,
  bool: false,
  nul: null,
  date: new Date(),  // stringified
  undef: undefined,  // removed from object
  inf: Infinity,  // forced to 'null'
  re: /.*/,  // lost, becomes an empty object
  map: new Map().set('key', 'value'), // lost, becomes an empty object
}

[VenelinBakalov]

Nice, thanks for all the details, that would be useful! we will take look at the suggested polyfil, this is exactly the reason why we still haven't rushed into implementing this too quickly because the JSON implementation only covers very basic type. Which at the end is covering for most of the use cases but still is worth investigating alternatives

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[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open 30 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 7 days.

[github-actions]

This issue was closed because it has been stalled for 7 days with no activity.