Entity Serialization and Deserialization

Serialization and Deserialization in discord-player is the process of converting a track or playlist object into a plain json object and vice versa.

Saving tracks or playlists in a database

You may want to save tracks or playlists in a database to be able to retrieve them later. This also helps your users to save their favorite tracks or playlists, or create a custom playlist. Discord Player offers a built-in way to save and retrieve tracks or playlists in a database.

Saving tracks

To save a track, you will have to first convert Discord Player track object into a plain json object. Discord Player exports a function named serialize which takes a track object and returns a plain json object.

import { serialize } from 'discord-player';
 
const track = MyDiscordPlayerTrack;
 
const serializedTrack = serialize(track);
 
await database.save('my-track-name', serializedTrack);

You can also encode the track object into a base64 string using the encode function.

import { encode } from 'discord-player';
 
const track = MyDiscordPlayerTrack;
 
const encodedTrackString = encode(serialize(track));
 
await database.save('my-track-name', encodedTrackString);

Retrieving tracks

To retrieve a track, you will have to first convert the plain json object into a Discord Player track object. Discord Player exports a function named deserialize which takes a plain json object and returns a Discord Player track object.

import { deserialize } from 'discord-player';
 
const serializedTrack = await database.get('my-track-name');
 
const track = deserialize(serializedTrack);
 
// now this track can be queued like a normal track

You can also decode the base64 string into a plain json object using the decode function.

import { decode } from 'discord-player';
 
const encodedTrackString = await database.get('my-track-name');
 
const serializedTrack = decode(encodedTrackString);
 
const track = deserialize(serializedTrack);
 
// now this track can be queued like a normal track

Saving playlists

You can use the same method as above to save or retrieve playlists.

Saving queue

Discord Player does not offer queue serialization. But you can use the following method to serialize tracks under the queue.

import { serialize } from 'discord-player';
 
const serializedTracks = queue.tracks.map((track) => serialize(track));
 
await database.save('my-queue', serializedTracks);