Using the serialized representation the client & server?

Hey @nateps I'm looking into adding an OT type for Slate.js and I was curious about how ShareDB works with the type.serialize() and type.deserialize() methods. Since Slate is built on top of Immutable.js, I'm dealing with immutable snapshot objects, instead of plain JS objects.

All of the apply(), create(), transform(), compose(), etc. logic is optimized to work on the deserialized object format, so I'd like to keep it in the deserialized format as much as possible.

It seems like right now deserialization to custom object types only occurs on the client, and on the server it only ever works with serialized representations. While working with the snapshots on the server, I'd like to use the deserialized, Immutable.js snapshot objects instead.

Is this true? Do you know how I'd achieve what I'm looking for? Or is there some reason it's not possible?

Thanks!

Edit: mixed up serialize and deserialize in a few places, fixed now.

Start by tracing type.serialize() and type.deserialize() through ShareDB’s client and server paths, then compare how apply(), create(), transform(), and compose() consume snapshots. Confirm whether server-side OT can use Immutable.js deserialized snapshots and document the supported path or the scope of a change.