can JSON serialize an array that uses *functions* as keys?

Question

I'm dabbling with a linguistics Javascript project. I'd like to build it using objects to represent Nouns and functions to store Verbs as this makes conceptualizing my project less difficult. I'm using functions as keys to an object (I've written an example below). Will it be possible to serialize this with JSON when it comes time to save the data.

function verbFn() {
   //do something
}

var nouns = {};

nouns[verbFn] = 'some value';

In this example, will JSON be able to serialize "nouns"?

---

Uh... after reflecting on my original question and reading the comments I've come to the conclusion that trying to do things this way is just very wrong and silly.

Answer 1

No, JSON can't do this. The keys have to be double-quoted strings.

Also it looks like you're not actually using the function as a key - it's being converted to a string:

<script>

var x = {};
x[window.open] = true;

for (var i in x)
    alert(typeof i + '\n' + i); // typeof i == string

</script>

Answer 2

According to the standards no you can't. The key has to be a string

Answer 3

No, keys should always be strings and nothing else. See the standard description.

And nouns is not an array, it's map, hash table, associative array, "object", one of those, whatever name you prefer.

Answer 4

JSON is a data structure syntax. A function is not data, so there is no way it can be serialised as part of a data structure (key or otherwise). Regardless of language, implementation or whatever else.

Answer 5

you are not really using functions as keys -- you are using the string conversion of a function as key, which also implicitly relies on those string representations being unique. For platforms that support decompiling functions this works fine, but theoretically there could be implementations that just return "[function]" which would be pretty bad in your case.