Refactor Encoders and add JSON support

[erikgaal]

Builds upon #83 and refactors it a bit to provide a clear solution. Also rebased the PR so it's up to date with the trunk.

Thanks @lsmith77 for the original PR!

[nonoesp]

Hi, @lsmith77 and @erikgaal I don't have the bandwidth to take on new features and maintain this project.

Would any of you want to help?

These pull requests are a really good start; it's just that I haven't even had time to figure out whether there are parts that break with your changes.

[CoolGoose]

@nonoesp since we're starting to use this more in our company, is there something I can start helping with to review / add tests so we can get some of these things moving forward ? Json support is something we're going to need, and I think it would be nice to do it part of this and not a fork.

[nonoesp]

@CoolGoose Hey! I have limited bandwidth for this. But I'll be happy to chat and let you maintain this package if you'd like. =)

[CoolGoose]

I can give it a try since I should be able to have a few hours per week for this. Let me review this PR first, and see how this goes ;)

[joelbutcher]

@CoolGoose picking this up as we have been maintaining our own version of this based on this PR for some time now. Now that L13 is supported, any chance this can be re-reviewed / merged into that target?

[CoolGoose]

Hey @joelbutcher we got a bit in the same situation but didn't progress a lot on the internal fork, but there are a few things on our internal todo that we'll have to tackle sooner than later (for example how one handles the check of the expired versions), I'll see how we can make that a bit more official in our fork :)