>
> You can always serialize things however you want. Using `serialize()`
> is just a convenience – there is absolutely nothing that prevents you
> from using a custom serialization routine. Note that while Java has
> built in serialization it is often not used, and instead libraries
> like Google's GSON are used. You register a type with hooks for
> serializing and deserializing, etc.
>
> It sounds like this is what you need anyway. Since built-in
> serialization happens differently in each language you'd probably want
> something custom in each language.
>
Whilst that might be the case with *serialize()*, by extension you also
lose the convenience of being able to use *json_encode() *on an already
properly structured object and immediately having a representation of that
object ready to send over the wire.
C#'s enums seem a good model to follow. 0-indexed by default, alternatively
you can specify the first key to change to (for example) 1-indexed or
specify all keys:
enum Days {Sat=1, Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri};
