Can we use reflection to instantiate custom TypeScript model from a JSON string?

Is it possible to clone a JSON-generated object or string into a Typescript class which I created? We are building a model of our API using Typescript classes. There’s a base class which they all extend which has common/helper methods. When we do JSON.parse(response) to auto-generate objects it creates simple objects and not our custom objects.

Is there a way we can convert those JSON-generated objects into our custom objects, so long as the field names match up? And, to make things more robust, can this but done where our custom objects’ fields are other custom objects and/or arrays of them?

Here is our code, with comments of what we’d like to achieve.

base-model.ts

export class BaseModelObject {
    uuid: string; // All of our objects in our model and JSON have this required field populated
    matchUUIDs<T extends BaseModelObject>( obj: T): boolean {
        return obj.uuid == this.uuid;
    }
}

child-model.ts

import { BaseModelObject } from 'base-model';
export class Child extends BaseModelObject {
}

parent-model.ts

import { BaseModelObject } from 'base-model';
import { Child } from 'child-model';
export class Parent extends BaseModelObject {
  children: Child[];
}

JSON payload

{
    'uuid': '0632a35c-e7dd-40a8-b5f4-f571a8359c1a',
    'children': [
        {
            'uuid': 'd738c408-4ae9-430d-a64d-ba3f085175fc'
        },
        {
            'uuid': '44d56a0d-ad2d-4e85-b5d1-da4371fc0e5f'
        }
    ]
}

In our components and directives and such, we hope to use the helper function in BaseModelObject:

Component code

let parent: Parent = JSON.parse(response);
console.log(parent.uuid); // Works!  0632a35c-e7dd-40a8-b5f4-f571a8359c1a

// Want this to print ‘true’, but instead we get TypeError: parebt.matchUUID is not a function
console.log(parent.matchUUID(‘0632a35c-e7dd-40a8-b5f4-f571a8359c1a’));

// Want this to print ‘true’, but instead we get TypeError: parent.children[0].matchUUID is not a function
console.log(parent.children[0].matchUUID(‘d738c408-4ae9-430d-a64d-ba3f085175fc’));

The problem is that JSON.parse() is not creating our classes, it’s creating simple objects with key/value pairs. So we’re thinking of “cloning” the JSON-generated object into an instance of our class, like this:

base-model.ts

export class BaseModelObject {

    [key: string]: any;
    
    matchUUIDs<T extends BaseModelObject>( obj: T): boolean {
        return obj['uuid'] == this['uuid'];
    }

    cloneFields(obj: any) {
        for (let prop in obj) {
            this[prop] = obj[prop];
        }
    }
}

Component code

let parent: Parent = new Parent(); // Creates instance of our class
parent.cloneFields(JSON.parse(response)); // Copy JSON fields to our object
console.log(parent.matchUUID('0632a35c-e7dd-40a8-b5f4-f571a8359c1a')); // prints 'true'
console.log(parent.children[0].matchUUID('d738c408-4ae9-430d-a64d-ba3f085175fc')); // Still throws TypeError: parent.children[0].matchUUID is not a function

The problem now rests in the fact that the cloning of the Parent object did not recursively clone the JSON-generated Child objects into instances of our custom Child class.

Since our Parent object is typed at compile-time and it knows that the data type of the children array is Child[] (our custom class), is there a way to use reflection to instantiate the right class?

Our logic would need to say:

1. Create an instance of our custom class
2. Tell our instance to clone the fields from the JSON-generated object
3. Iterate over the fields in the JSON-generated object
4. For each field name from the JSON-generated object, find the "type definition" in our custom class
5. If the type definition is not a primitive or native Typescript type, then instantiate a new instance of that "type" and then clone it's fields.

(and it would need to recursively traverse the whole JSON object structure to match up all other custom classes/objects we add to our model).

So something like:

cloneFields(obj: any) {
    for (let prop in obj) {
        let A: any = ...find the data type of prop...
        if(...A is a primitive type ...) {
            this[prop] = obj[prop];
        } else {
          // Yes, I know this code won't compile.
          // Just trying to illustrate how to instantiate
          let B: <T extends BaseModelUtil> = ...instantiate an instance of A...
          B.cloneFields(prop);
          A[prop] = B;
        }
    }
}

Is it possible to reflect a data type from a class variable definition and then instantiate it at runtime?

Or if I'm going down an ugly rabbit hole to which you know a different solution, I'd love to hear it. We simply want to build our custom objects from a JSON payload without needing to hand-code the same patterns over and over since we expect our model to grow into dozens of objects and hundreds of fields.

Thanks in advance! Michael