flutter-implement-json-serialization

Contents

• Core Guidelines
• Dart 3 Pattern Matching in fromJson
• Background Parsing
• Manual vs Code-Gen Decision
• Workflow: Implementing a Serializable Model
• Workflow: Fetching and Parsing JSON
• Examples

Core Guidelines

• Import dart:convert: Use jsonEncode() and jsonDecode() for manual serialization.
• Type Safety: Always cast jsonDecode() result to Map<String, dynamic> (objects) or List<dynamic> (arrays). Never work with raw dynamic.
• Encapsulation: Define fromJson factory constructor and toJson method within the model class.
• Background Parsing: Offload to a separate isolate via compute() if parsing takes > 16ms (large JSON payloads).
• Error Handling: Throw FormatException on invalid JSON. Never return null from fromJson.

Dart 3 Pattern Matching in fromJson