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Revision: 1.39
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# Content
1 NAME
2 JSON::XS - JSON serialising/deserialising, done correctly and fast
3
4 JSON::XS - 正しくて高速な JSON シリアライザ/デシリアライザ
5 (http://fleur.hio.jp/perldoc/mix/lib/JSON/XS.html)
6
7 SYNOPSIS
8 use JSON::XS;
9
10 # exported functions, they croak on error
11 # and expect/generate UTF-8
12
13 $utf8_encoded_json_text = encode_json $perl_hash_or_arrayref;
14 $perl_hash_or_arrayref = decode_json $utf8_encoded_json_text;
15
16 # OO-interface
17
18 $coder = JSON::XS->new->ascii->pretty->allow_nonref;
19 $pretty_printed_unencoded = $coder->encode ($perl_scalar);
20 $perl_scalar = $coder->decode ($unicode_json_text);
21
22 # Note that JSON version 2.0 and above will automatically use JSON::XS
23 # if available, at virtually no speed overhead either, so you should
24 # be able to just:
25
26 use JSON;
27
28 # and do the same things, except that you have a pure-perl fallback now.
29
30 DESCRIPTION
31 This module converts Perl data structures to JSON and vice versa. Its
32 primary goal is to be *correct* and its secondary goal is to be *fast*.
33 To reach the latter goal it was written in C.
34
35 Beginning with version 2.0 of the JSON module, when both JSON and
36 JSON::XS are installed, then JSON will fall back on JSON::XS (this can
37 be overridden) with no overhead due to emulation (by inheriting
38 constructor and methods). If JSON::XS is not available, it will fall
39 back to the compatible JSON::PP module as backend, so using JSON instead
40 of JSON::XS gives you a portable JSON API that can be fast when you need
41 and doesn't require a C compiler when that is a problem.
42
43 As this is the n-th-something JSON module on CPAN, what was the reason
44 to write yet another JSON module? While it seems there are many JSON
45 modules, none of them correctly handle all corner cases, and in most
46 cases their maintainers are unresponsive, gone missing, or not listening
47 to bug reports for other reasons.
48
49 See MAPPING, below, on how JSON::XS maps perl values to JSON values and
50 vice versa.
51
52 FEATURES
53 * correct Unicode handling
54
55 This module knows how to handle Unicode, documents how and when it
56 does so, and even documents what "correct" means.
57
58 * round-trip integrity
59
60 When you serialise a perl data structure using only data types
61 supported by JSON and Perl, the deserialised data structure is
62 identical on the Perl level. (e.g. the string "2.0" doesn't suddenly
63 become "2" just because it looks like a number). There *are* minor
64 exceptions to this, read the MAPPING section below to learn about
65 those.
66
67 * strict checking of JSON correctness
68
69 There is no guessing, no generating of illegal JSON texts by
70 default, and only JSON is accepted as input by default (the latter
71 is a security feature).
72
73 * fast
74
75 Compared to other JSON modules and other serialisers such as
76 Storable, this module usually compares favourably in terms of speed,
77 too.
78
79 * simple to use
80
81 This module has both a simple functional interface as well as an
82 object oriented interface.
83
84 * reasonably versatile output formats
85
86 You can choose between the most compact guaranteed-single-line
87 format possible (nice for simple line-based protocols), a pure-ASCII
88 format (for when your transport is not 8-bit clean, still supports
89 the whole Unicode range), or a pretty-printed format (for when you
90 want to read that stuff). Or you can combine those features in
91 whatever way you like.
92
93 FUNCTIONAL INTERFACE
94 The following convenience methods are provided by this module. They are
95 exported by default:
96
97 $json_text = encode_json $perl_scalar
98 Converts the given Perl data structure to a UTF-8 encoded, binary
99 string (that is, the string contains octets only). Croaks on error.
100
101 This function call is functionally identical to:
102
103 $json_text = JSON::XS->new->utf8->encode ($perl_scalar)
104
105 Except being faster.
106
107 $perl_scalar = decode_json $json_text
108 The opposite of "encode_json": expects an UTF-8 (binary) string and
109 tries to parse that as an UTF-8 encoded JSON text, returning the
110 resulting reference. Croaks on error.
111
112 This function call is functionally identical to:
113
114 $perl_scalar = JSON::XS->new->utf8->decode ($json_text)
115
116 Except being faster.
117
118 A FEW NOTES ON UNICODE AND PERL
119 Since this often leads to confusion, here are a few very clear words on
120 how Unicode works in Perl, modulo bugs.
121
122 1. Perl strings can store characters with ordinal values > 255.
123 This enables you to store Unicode characters as single characters in
124 a Perl string - very natural.
125
126 2. Perl does *not* associate an encoding with your strings.
127 ... until you force it to, e.g. when matching it against a regex, or
128 printing the scalar to a file, in which case Perl either interprets
129 your string as locale-encoded text, octets/binary, or as Unicode,
130 depending on various settings. In no case is an encoding stored
131 together with your data, it is *use* that decides encoding, not any
132 magical meta data.
133
134 3. The internal utf-8 flag has no meaning with regards to the encoding
135 of your string.
136 Just ignore that flag unless you debug a Perl bug, a module written
137 in XS or want to dive into the internals of perl. Otherwise it will
138 only confuse you, as, despite the name, it says nothing about how
139 your string is encoded. You can have Unicode strings with that flag
140 set, with that flag clear, and you can have binary data with that
141 flag set and that flag clear. Other possibilities exist, too.
142
143 If you didn't know about that flag, just the better, pretend it
144 doesn't exist.
145
146 4. A "Unicode String" is simply a string where each character can be
147 validly interpreted as a Unicode code point.
148 If you have UTF-8 encoded data, it is no longer a Unicode string,
149 but a Unicode string encoded in UTF-8, giving you a binary string.
150
151 5. A string containing "high" (> 255) character values is *not* a UTF-8
152 string.
153 It's a fact. Learn to live with it.
154
155 I hope this helps :)
156
157 OBJECT-ORIENTED INTERFACE
158 The object oriented interface lets you configure your own encoding or
159 decoding style, within the limits of supported formats.
160
161 $json = new JSON::XS
162 Creates a new JSON::XS object that can be used to de/encode JSON
163 strings. All boolean flags described below are by default
164 *disabled*.
165
166 The mutators for flags all return the JSON object again and thus
167 calls can be chained:
168
169 my $json = JSON::XS->new->utf8->space_after->encode ({a => [1,2]})
170 => {"a": [1, 2]}
171
172 $json = $json->ascii ([$enable])
173 $enabled = $json->get_ascii
174 If $enable is true (or missing), then the "encode" method will not
175 generate characters outside the code range 0..127 (which is ASCII).
176 Any Unicode characters outside that range will be escaped using
177 either a single \uXXXX (BMP characters) or a double \uHHHH\uLLLLL
178 escape sequence, as per RFC4627. The resulting encoded JSON text can
179 be treated as a native Unicode string, an ascii-encoded,
180 latin1-encoded or UTF-8 encoded string, or any other superset of
181 ASCII.
182
183 If $enable is false, then the "encode" method will not escape
184 Unicode characters unless required by the JSON syntax or other
185 flags. This results in a faster and more compact format.
186
187 See also the section *ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES* later in this
188 document.
189
190 The main use for this flag is to produce JSON texts that can be
191 transmitted over a 7-bit channel, as the encoded JSON texts will not
192 contain any 8 bit characters.
193
194 JSON::XS->new->ascii (1)->encode ([chr 0x10401])
195 => ["\ud801\udc01"]
196
197 $json = $json->latin1 ([$enable])
198 $enabled = $json->get_latin1
199 If $enable is true (or missing), then the "encode" method will
200 encode the resulting JSON text as latin1 (or iso-8859-1), escaping
201 any characters outside the code range 0..255. The resulting string
202 can be treated as a latin1-encoded JSON text or a native Unicode
203 string. The "decode" method will not be affected in any way by this
204 flag, as "decode" by default expects Unicode, which is a strict
205 superset of latin1.
206
207 If $enable is false, then the "encode" method will not escape
208 Unicode characters unless required by the JSON syntax or other
209 flags.
210
211 See also the section *ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES* later in this
212 document.
213
214 The main use for this flag is efficiently encoding binary data as
215 JSON text, as most octets will not be escaped, resulting in a
216 smaller encoded size. The disadvantage is that the resulting JSON
217 text is encoded in latin1 (and must correctly be treated as such
218 when storing and transferring), a rare encoding for JSON. It is
219 therefore most useful when you want to store data structures known
220 to contain binary data efficiently in files or databases, not when
221 talking to other JSON encoders/decoders.
222
223 JSON::XS->new->latin1->encode (["\x{89}\x{abc}"]
224 => ["\x{89}\\u0abc"] # (perl syntax, U+abc escaped, U+89 not)
225
226 $json = $json->utf8 ([$enable])
227 $enabled = $json->get_utf8
228 If $enable is true (or missing), then the "encode" method will
229 encode the JSON result into UTF-8, as required by many protocols,
230 while the "decode" method expects to be handled an UTF-8-encoded
231 string. Please note that UTF-8-encoded strings do not contain any
232 characters outside the range 0..255, they are thus useful for
233 bytewise/binary I/O. In future versions, enabling this option might
234 enable autodetection of the UTF-16 and UTF-32 encoding families, as
235 described in RFC4627.
236
237 If $enable is false, then the "encode" method will return the JSON
238 string as a (non-encoded) Unicode string, while "decode" expects
239 thus a Unicode string. Any decoding or encoding (e.g. to UTF-8 or
240 UTF-16) needs to be done yourself, e.g. using the Encode module.
241
242 See also the section *ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES* later in this
243 document.
244
245 Example, output UTF-16BE-encoded JSON:
246
247 use Encode;
248 $jsontext = encode "UTF-16BE", JSON::XS->new->encode ($object);
249
250 Example, decode UTF-32LE-encoded JSON:
251
252 use Encode;
253 $object = JSON::XS->new->decode (decode "UTF-32LE", $jsontext);
254
255 $json = $json->pretty ([$enable])
256 This enables (or disables) all of the "indent", "space_before" and
257 "space_after" (and in the future possibly more) flags in one call to
258 generate the most readable (or most compact) form possible.
259
260 Example, pretty-print some simple structure:
261
262 my $json = JSON::XS->new->pretty(1)->encode ({a => [1,2]})
263 =>
264 {
265 "a" : [
266 1,
267 2
268 ]
269 }
270
271 $json = $json->indent ([$enable])
272 $enabled = $json->get_indent
273 If $enable is true (or missing), then the "encode" method will use a
274 multiline format as output, putting every array member or
275 object/hash key-value pair into its own line, indenting them
276 properly.
277
278 If $enable is false, no newlines or indenting will be produced, and
279 the resulting JSON text is guaranteed not to contain any "newlines".
280
281 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts.
282
283 $json = $json->space_before ([$enable])
284 $enabled = $json->get_space_before
285 If $enable is true (or missing), then the "encode" method will add
286 an extra optional space before the ":" separating keys from values
287 in JSON objects.
288
289 If $enable is false, then the "encode" method will not add any extra
290 space at those places.
291
292 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts. You will also
293 most likely combine this setting with "space_after".
294
295 Example, space_before enabled, space_after and indent disabled:
296
297 {"key" :"value"}
298
299 $json = $json->space_after ([$enable])
300 $enabled = $json->get_space_after
301 If $enable is true (or missing), then the "encode" method will add
302 an extra optional space after the ":" separating keys from values in
303 JSON objects and extra whitespace after the "," separating key-value
304 pairs and array members.
305
306 If $enable is false, then the "encode" method will not add any extra
307 space at those places.
308
309 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts.
310
311 Example, space_before and indent disabled, space_after enabled:
312
313 {"key": "value"}
314
315 $json = $json->relaxed ([$enable])
316 $enabled = $json->get_relaxed
317 If $enable is true (or missing), then "decode" will accept some
318 extensions to normal JSON syntax (see below). "encode" will not be
319 affected in anyway. *Be aware that this option makes you accept
320 invalid JSON texts as if they were valid!*. I suggest only to use
321 this option to parse application-specific files written by humans
322 (configuration files, resource files etc.)
323
324 If $enable is false (the default), then "decode" will only accept
325 valid JSON texts.
326
327 Currently accepted extensions are:
328
329 * list items can have an end-comma
330
331 JSON *separates* array elements and key-value pairs with commas.
332 This can be annoying if you write JSON texts manually and want
333 to be able to quickly append elements, so this extension accepts
334 comma at the end of such items not just between them:
335
336 [
337 1,
338 2, <- this comma not normally allowed
339 ]
340 {
341 "k1": "v1",
342 "k2": "v2", <- this comma not normally allowed
343 }
344
345 * shell-style '#'-comments
346
347 Whenever JSON allows whitespace, shell-style comments are
348 additionally allowed. They are terminated by the first
349 carriage-return or line-feed character, after which more
350 white-space and comments are allowed.
351
352 [
353 1, # this comment not allowed in JSON
354 # neither this one...
355 ]
356
357 $json = $json->canonical ([$enable])
358 $enabled = $json->get_canonical
359 If $enable is true (or missing), then the "encode" method will
360 output JSON objects by sorting their keys. This is adding a
361 comparatively high overhead.
362
363 If $enable is false, then the "encode" method will output key-value
364 pairs in the order Perl stores them (which will likely change
365 between runs of the same script, and can change even within the same
366 run from 5.18 onwards).
367
368 This option is useful if you want the same data structure to be
369 encoded as the same JSON text (given the same overall settings). If
370 it is disabled, the same hash might be encoded differently even if
371 contains the same data, as key-value pairs have no inherent ordering
372 in Perl.
373
374 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts.
375
376 This setting has currently no effect on tied hashes.
377
378 $json = $json->allow_nonref ([$enable])
379 $enabled = $json->get_allow_nonref
380 If $enable is true (or missing), then the "encode" method can
381 convert a non-reference into its corresponding string, number or
382 null JSON value, which is an extension to RFC4627. Likewise,
383 "decode" will accept those JSON values instead of croaking.
384
385 If $enable is false, then the "encode" method will croak if it isn't
386 passed an arrayref or hashref, as JSON texts must either be an
387 object or array. Likewise, "decode" will croak if given something
388 that is not a JSON object or array.
389
390 Example, encode a Perl scalar as JSON value with enabled
391 "allow_nonref", resulting in an invalid JSON text:
392
393 JSON::XS->new->allow_nonref->encode ("Hello, World!")
394 => "Hello, World!"
395
396 $json = $json->allow_unknown ([$enable])
397 $enabled = $json->get_allow_unknown
398 If $enable is true (or missing), then "encode" will *not* throw an
399 exception when it encounters values it cannot represent in JSON (for
400 example, filehandles) but instead will encode a JSON "null" value.
401 Note that blessed objects are not included here and are handled
402 separately by c<allow_nonref>.
403
404 If $enable is false (the default), then "encode" will throw an
405 exception when it encounters anything it cannot encode as JSON.
406
407 This option does not affect "decode" in any way, and it is
408 recommended to leave it off unless you know your communications
409 partner.
410
411 $json = $json->allow_blessed ([$enable])
412 $enabled = $json->get_allow_blessed
413 See "OBJECT SERIALISATION" for details.
414
415 If $enable is true (or missing), then the "encode" method will not
416 barf when it encounters a blessed reference that it cannot convert
417 otherwise. Instead, a JSON "null" value is encoded instead of the
418 object.
419
420 If $enable is false (the default), then "encode" will throw an
421 exception when it encounters a blessed object that it cannot convert
422 otherwise.
423
424 This setting has no effect on "decode".
425
426 $json = $json->convert_blessed ([$enable])
427 $enabled = $json->get_convert_blessed
428 See "OBJECT SERIALISATION" for details.
429
430 If $enable is true (or missing), then "encode", upon encountering a
431 blessed object, will check for the availability of the "TO_JSON"
432 method on the object's class. If found, it will be called in scalar
433 context and the resulting scalar will be encoded instead of the
434 object.
435
436 The "TO_JSON" method may safely call die if it wants. If "TO_JSON"
437 returns other blessed objects, those will be handled in the same
438 way. "TO_JSON" must take care of not causing an endless recursion
439 cycle (== crash) in this case. The name of "TO_JSON" was chosen
440 because other methods called by the Perl core (== not by the user of
441 the object) are usually in upper case letters and to avoid
442 collisions with any "to_json" function or method.
443
444 If $enable is false (the default), then "encode" will not consider
445 this type of conversion.
446
447 This setting has no effect on "decode".
448
449 $json = $json->allow_tags ([$enable])
450 $enabled = $json->allow_tags
451 See "OBJECT SERIALISATION" for details.
452
453 If $enable is true (or missing), then "encode", upon encountering a
454 blessed object, will check for the availability of the "FREEZE"
455 method on the object's class. If found, it will be used to serialise
456 the object into a nonstandard tagged JSON value (that JSON decoders
457 cannot decode).
458
459 It also causes "decode" to parse such tagged JSON values and
460 deserialise them via a call to the "THAW" method.
461
462 If $enable is false (the default), then "encode" will not consider
463 this type of conversion, and tagged JSON values will cause a parse
464 error in "decode", as if tags were not part of the grammar.
465
466 $json = $json->filter_json_object ([$coderef->($hashref)])
467 When $coderef is specified, it will be called from "decode" each
468 time it decodes a JSON object. The only argument is a reference to
469 the newly-created hash. If the code references returns a single
470 scalar (which need not be a reference), this value (i.e. a copy of
471 that scalar to avoid aliasing) is inserted into the deserialised
472 data structure. If it returns an empty list (NOTE: *not* "undef",
473 which is a valid scalar), the original deserialised hash will be
474 inserted. This setting can slow down decoding considerably.
475
476 When $coderef is omitted or undefined, any existing callback will be
477 removed and "decode" will not change the deserialised hash in any
478 way.
479
480 Example, convert all JSON objects into the integer 5:
481
482 my $js = JSON::XS->new->filter_json_object (sub { 5 });
483 # returns [5]
484 $js->decode ('[{}]')
485 # throw an exception because allow_nonref is not enabled
486 # so a lone 5 is not allowed.
487 $js->decode ('{"a":1, "b":2}');
488
489 $json = $json->filter_json_single_key_object ($key [=>
490 $coderef->($value)])
491 Works remotely similar to "filter_json_object", but is only called
492 for JSON objects having a single key named $key.
493
494 This $coderef is called before the one specified via
495 "filter_json_object", if any. It gets passed the single value in the
496 JSON object. If it returns a single value, it will be inserted into
497 the data structure. If it returns nothing (not even "undef" but the
498 empty list), the callback from "filter_json_object" will be called
499 next, as if no single-key callback were specified.
500
501 If $coderef is omitted or undefined, the corresponding callback will
502 be disabled. There can only ever be one callback for a given key.
503
504 As this callback gets called less often then the
505 "filter_json_object" one, decoding speed will not usually suffer as
506 much. Therefore, single-key objects make excellent targets to
507 serialise Perl objects into, especially as single-key JSON objects
508 are as close to the type-tagged value concept as JSON gets (it's
509 basically an ID/VALUE tuple). Of course, JSON does not support this
510 in any way, so you need to make sure your data never looks like a
511 serialised Perl hash.
512
513 Typical names for the single object key are "__class_whatever__", or
514 "$__dollars_are_rarely_used__$" or "}ugly_brace_placement", or even
515 things like "__class_md5sum(classname)__", to reduce the risk of
516 clashing with real hashes.
517
518 Example, decode JSON objects of the form "{ "__widget__" => <id> }"
519 into the corresponding $WIDGET{<id>} object:
520
521 # return whatever is in $WIDGET{5}:
522 JSON::XS
523 ->new
524 ->filter_json_single_key_object (__widget__ => sub {
525 $WIDGET{ $_[0] }
526 })
527 ->decode ('{"__widget__": 5')
528
529 # this can be used with a TO_JSON method in some "widget" class
530 # for serialisation to json:
531 sub WidgetBase::TO_JSON {
532 my ($self) = @_;
533
534 unless ($self->{id}) {
535 $self->{id} = ..get..some..id..;
536 $WIDGET{$self->{id}} = $self;
537 }
538
539 { __widget__ => $self->{id} }
540 }
541
542 $json = $json->shrink ([$enable])
543 $enabled = $json->get_shrink
544 Perl usually over-allocates memory a bit when allocating space for
545 strings. This flag optionally resizes strings generated by either
546 "encode" or "decode" to their minimum size possible. This can save
547 memory when your JSON texts are either very very long or you have
548 many short strings. It will also try to downgrade any strings to
549 octet-form if possible: perl stores strings internally either in an
550 encoding called UTF-X or in octet-form. The latter cannot store
551 everything but uses less space in general (and some buggy Perl or C
552 code might even rely on that internal representation being used).
553
554 The actual definition of what shrink does might change in future
555 versions, but it will always try to save space at the expense of
556 time.
557
558 If $enable is true (or missing), the string returned by "encode"
559 will be shrunk-to-fit, while all strings generated by "decode" will
560 also be shrunk-to-fit.
561
562 If $enable is false, then the normal perl allocation algorithms are
563 used. If you work with your data, then this is likely to be faster.
564
565 In the future, this setting might control other things, such as
566 converting strings that look like integers or floats into integers
567 or floats internally (there is no difference on the Perl level),
568 saving space.
569
570 $json = $json->max_depth ([$maximum_nesting_depth])
571 $max_depth = $json->get_max_depth
572 Sets the maximum nesting level (default 512) accepted while encoding
573 or decoding. If a higher nesting level is detected in JSON text or a
574 Perl data structure, then the encoder and decoder will stop and
575 croak at that point.
576
577 Nesting level is defined by number of hash- or arrayrefs that the
578 encoder needs to traverse to reach a given point or the number of
579 "{" or "[" characters without their matching closing parenthesis
580 crossed to reach a given character in a string.
581
582 Setting the maximum depth to one disallows any nesting, so that
583 ensures that the object is only a single hash/object or array.
584
585 If no argument is given, the highest possible setting will be used,
586 which is rarely useful.
587
588 Note that nesting is implemented by recursion in C. The default
589 value has been chosen to be as large as typical operating systems
590 allow without crashing.
591
592 See SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS, below, for more info on why this is
593 useful.
594
595 $json = $json->max_size ([$maximum_string_size])
596 $max_size = $json->get_max_size
597 Set the maximum length a JSON text may have (in bytes) where
598 decoding is being attempted. The default is 0, meaning no limit.
599 When "decode" is called on a string that is longer then this many
600 bytes, it will not attempt to decode the string but throw an
601 exception. This setting has no effect on "encode" (yet).
602
603 If no argument is given, the limit check will be deactivated (same
604 as when 0 is specified).
605
606 See SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS, below, for more info on why this is
607 useful.
608
609 $json_text = $json->encode ($perl_scalar)
610 Converts the given Perl value or data structure to its JSON
611 representation. Croaks on error.
612
613 $perl_scalar = $json->decode ($json_text)
614 The opposite of "encode": expects a JSON text and tries to parse it,
615 returning the resulting simple scalar or reference. Croaks on error.
616
617 ($perl_scalar, $characters) = $json->decode_prefix ($json_text)
618 This works like the "decode" method, but instead of raising an
619 exception when there is trailing garbage after the first JSON
620 object, it will silently stop parsing there and return the number of
621 characters consumed so far.
622
623 This is useful if your JSON texts are not delimited by an outer
624 protocol and you need to know where the JSON text ends.
625
626 JSON::XS->new->decode_prefix ("[1] the tail")
627 => ([], 3)
628
629 INCREMENTAL PARSING
630 In some cases, there is the need for incremental parsing of JSON texts.
631 While this module always has to keep both JSON text and resulting Perl
632 data structure in memory at one time, it does allow you to parse a JSON
633 stream incrementally. It does so by accumulating text until it has a
634 full JSON object, which it then can decode. This process is similar to
635 using "decode_prefix" to see if a full JSON object is available, but is
636 much more efficient (and can be implemented with a minimum of method
637 calls).
638
639 JSON::XS will only attempt to parse the JSON text once it is sure it has
640 enough text to get a decisive result, using a very simple but truly
641 incremental parser. This means that it sometimes won't stop as early as
642 the full parser, for example, it doesn't detect mismatched parentheses.
643 The only thing it guarantees is that it starts decoding as soon as a
644 syntactically valid JSON text has been seen. This means you need to set
645 resource limits (e.g. "max_size") to ensure the parser will stop parsing
646 in the presence if syntax errors.
647
648 The following methods implement this incremental parser.
649
650 [void, scalar or list context] = $json->incr_parse ([$string])
651 This is the central parsing function. It can both append new text
652 and extract objects from the stream accumulated so far (both of
653 these functions are optional).
654
655 If $string is given, then this string is appended to the already
656 existing JSON fragment stored in the $json object.
657
658 After that, if the function is called in void context, it will
659 simply return without doing anything further. This can be used to
660 add more text in as many chunks as you want.
661
662 If the method is called in scalar context, then it will try to
663 extract exactly *one* JSON object. If that is successful, it will
664 return this object, otherwise it will return "undef". If there is a
665 parse error, this method will croak just as "decode" would do (one
666 can then use "incr_skip" to skip the erroneous part). This is the
667 most common way of using the method.
668
669 And finally, in list context, it will try to extract as many objects
670 from the stream as it can find and return them, or the empty list
671 otherwise. For this to work, there must be no separators between the
672 JSON objects or arrays, instead they must be concatenated
673 back-to-back. If an error occurs, an exception will be raised as in
674 the scalar context case. Note that in this case, any
675 previously-parsed JSON texts will be lost.
676
677 Example: Parse some JSON arrays/objects in a given string and return
678 them.
679
680 my @objs = JSON::XS->new->incr_parse ("[5][7][1,2]");
681
682 $lvalue_string = $json->incr_text
683 This method returns the currently stored JSON fragment as an lvalue,
684 that is, you can manipulate it. This *only* works when a preceding
685 call to "incr_parse" in *scalar context* successfully returned an
686 object. Under all other circumstances you must not call this
687 function (I mean it. although in simple tests it might actually
688 work, it *will* fail under real world conditions). As a special
689 exception, you can also call this method before having parsed
690 anything.
691
692 This function is useful in two cases: a) finding the trailing text
693 after a JSON object or b) parsing multiple JSON objects separated by
694 non-JSON text (such as commas).
695
696 $json->incr_skip
697 This will reset the state of the incremental parser and will remove
698 the parsed text from the input buffer so far. This is useful after
699 "incr_parse" died, in which case the input buffer and incremental
700 parser state is left unchanged, to skip the text parsed so far and
701 to reset the parse state.
702
703 The difference to "incr_reset" is that only text until the parse
704 error occurred is removed.
705
706 $json->incr_reset
707 This completely resets the incremental parser, that is, after this
708 call, it will be as if the parser had never parsed anything.
709
710 This is useful if you want to repeatedly parse JSON objects and want
711 to ignore any trailing data, which means you have to reset the
712 parser after each successful decode.
713
714 LIMITATIONS
715 All options that affect decoding are supported, except "allow_nonref".
716 The reason for this is that it cannot be made to work sensibly: JSON
717 objects and arrays are self-delimited, i.e. you can concatenate them
718 back to back and still decode them perfectly. This does not hold true
719 for JSON numbers, however.
720
721 For example, is the string 1 a single JSON number, or is it simply the
722 start of 12? Or is 12 a single JSON number, or the concatenation of 1
723 and 2? In neither case you can tell, and this is why JSON::XS takes the
724 conservative route and disallows this case.
725
726 EXAMPLES
727 Some examples will make all this clearer. First, a simple example that
728 works similarly to "decode_prefix": We want to decode the JSON object at
729 the start of a string and identify the portion after the JSON object:
730
731 my $text = "[1,2,3] hello";
732
733 my $json = new JSON::XS;
734
735 my $obj = $json->incr_parse ($text)
736 or die "expected JSON object or array at beginning of string";
737
738 my $tail = $json->incr_text;
739 # $tail now contains " hello"
740
741 Easy, isn't it?
742
743 Now for a more complicated example: Imagine a hypothetical protocol
744 where you read some requests from a TCP stream, and each request is a
745 JSON array, without any separation between them (in fact, it is often
746 useful to use newlines as "separators", as these get interpreted as
747 whitespace at the start of the JSON text, which makes it possible to
748 test said protocol with "telnet"...).
749
750 Here is how you'd do it (it is trivial to write this in an event-based
751 manner):
752
753 my $json = new JSON::XS;
754
755 # read some data from the socket
756 while (sysread $socket, my $buf, 4096) {
757
758 # split and decode as many requests as possible
759 for my $request ($json->incr_parse ($buf)) {
760 # act on the $request
761 }
762 }
763
764 Another complicated example: Assume you have a string with JSON objects
765 or arrays, all separated by (optional) comma characters (e.g. "[1],[2],
766 [3]"). To parse them, we have to skip the commas between the JSON texts,
767 and here is where the lvalue-ness of "incr_text" comes in useful:
768
769 my $text = "[1],[2], [3]";
770 my $json = new JSON::XS;
771
772 # void context, so no parsing done
773 $json->incr_parse ($text);
774
775 # now extract as many objects as possible. note the
776 # use of scalar context so incr_text can be called.
777 while (my $obj = $json->incr_parse) {
778 # do something with $obj
779
780 # now skip the optional comma
781 $json->incr_text =~ s/^ \s* , //x;
782 }
783
784 Now lets go for a very complex example: Assume that you have a gigantic
785 JSON array-of-objects, many gigabytes in size, and you want to parse it,
786 but you cannot load it into memory fully (this has actually happened in
787 the real world :).
788
789 Well, you lost, you have to implement your own JSON parser. But JSON::XS
790 can still help you: You implement a (very simple) array parser and let
791 JSON decode the array elements, which are all full JSON objects on their
792 own (this wouldn't work if the array elements could be JSON numbers, for
793 example):
794
795 my $json = new JSON::XS;
796
797 # open the monster
798 open my $fh, "<bigfile.json"
799 or die "bigfile: $!";
800
801 # first parse the initial "["
802 for (;;) {
803 sysread $fh, my $buf, 65536
804 or die "read error: $!";
805 $json->incr_parse ($buf); # void context, so no parsing
806
807 # Exit the loop once we found and removed(!) the initial "[".
808 # In essence, we are (ab-)using the $json object as a simple scalar
809 # we append data to.
810 last if $json->incr_text =~ s/^ \s* \[ //x;
811 }
812
813 # now we have the skipped the initial "[", so continue
814 # parsing all the elements.
815 for (;;) {
816 # in this loop we read data until we got a single JSON object
817 for (;;) {
818 if (my $obj = $json->incr_parse) {
819 # do something with $obj
820 last;
821 }
822
823 # add more data
824 sysread $fh, my $buf, 65536
825 or die "read error: $!";
826 $json->incr_parse ($buf); # void context, so no parsing
827 }
828
829 # in this loop we read data until we either found and parsed the
830 # separating "," between elements, or the final "]"
831 for (;;) {
832 # first skip whitespace
833 $json->incr_text =~ s/^\s*//;
834
835 # if we find "]", we are done
836 if ($json->incr_text =~ s/^\]//) {
837 print "finished.\n";
838 exit;
839 }
840
841 # if we find ",", we can continue with the next element
842 if ($json->incr_text =~ s/^,//) {
843 last;
844 }
845
846 # if we find anything else, we have a parse error!
847 if (length $json->incr_text) {
848 die "parse error near ", $json->incr_text;
849 }
850
851 # else add more data
852 sysread $fh, my $buf, 65536
853 or die "read error: $!";
854 $json->incr_parse ($buf); # void context, so no parsing
855 }
856
857 This is a complex example, but most of the complexity comes from the
858 fact that we are trying to be correct (bear with me if I am wrong, I
859 never ran the above example :).
860
861 MAPPING
862 This section describes how JSON::XS maps Perl values to JSON values and
863 vice versa. These mappings are designed to "do the right thing" in most
864 circumstances automatically, preserving round-tripping characteristics
865 (what you put in comes out as something equivalent).
866
867 For the more enlightened: note that in the following descriptions,
868 lowercase *perl* refers to the Perl interpreter, while uppercase *Perl*
869 refers to the abstract Perl language itself.
870
871 JSON -> PERL
872 object
873 A JSON object becomes a reference to a hash in Perl. No ordering of
874 object keys is preserved (JSON does not preserve object key ordering
875 itself).
876
877 array
878 A JSON array becomes a reference to an array in Perl.
879
880 string
881 A JSON string becomes a string scalar in Perl - Unicode codepoints
882 in JSON are represented by the same codepoints in the Perl string,
883 so no manual decoding is necessary.
884
885 number
886 A JSON number becomes either an integer, numeric (floating point) or
887 string scalar in perl, depending on its range and any fractional
888 parts. On the Perl level, there is no difference between those as
889 Perl handles all the conversion details, but an integer may take
890 slightly less memory and might represent more values exactly than
891 floating point numbers.
892
893 If the number consists of digits only, JSON::XS will try to
894 represent it as an integer value. If that fails, it will try to
895 represent it as a numeric (floating point) value if that is possible
896 without loss of precision. Otherwise it will preserve the number as
897 a string value (in which case you lose roundtripping ability, as the
898 JSON number will be re-encoded to a JSON string).
899
900 Numbers containing a fractional or exponential part will always be
901 represented as numeric (floating point) values, possibly at a loss
902 of precision (in which case you might lose perfect roundtripping
903 ability, but the JSON number will still be re-encoded as a JSON
904 number).
905
906 Note that precision is not accuracy - binary floating point values
907 cannot represent most decimal fractions exactly, and when converting
908 from and to floating point, JSON::XS only guarantees precision up to
909 but not including the least significant bit.
910
911 true, false
912 These JSON atoms become "Types::Serialiser::true" and
913 "Types::Serialiser::false", respectively. They are overloaded to act
914 almost exactly like the numbers 1 and 0. You can check whether a
915 scalar is a JSON boolean by using the "Types::Serialiser::is_bool"
916 function (after "use Types::Serialier", of course).
917
918 null
919 A JSON null atom becomes "undef" in Perl.
920
921 shell-style comments ("# *text*")
922 As a nonstandard extension to the JSON syntax that is enabled by the
923 "relaxed" setting, shell-style comments are allowed. They can start
924 anywhere outside strings and go till the end of the line.
925
926 tagged values ("(*tag*)*value*").
927 Another nonstandard extension to the JSON syntax, enabled with the
928 "allow_tags" setting, are tagged values. In this implementation, the
929 *tag* must be a perl package/class name encoded as a JSON string,
930 and the *value* must be a JSON array encoding optional constructor
931 arguments.
932
933 See "OBJECT SERIALISATION", below, for details.
934
935 PERL -> JSON
936 The mapping from Perl to JSON is slightly more difficult, as Perl is a
937 truly typeless language, so we can only guess which JSON type is meant
938 by a Perl value.
939
940 hash references
941 Perl hash references become JSON objects. As there is no inherent
942 ordering in hash keys (or JSON objects), they will usually be
943 encoded in a pseudo-random order. JSON::XS can optionally sort the
944 hash keys (determined by the *canonical* flag), so the same
945 datastructure will serialise to the same JSON text (given same
946 settings and version of JSON::XS), but this incurs a runtime
947 overhead and is only rarely useful, e.g. when you want to compare
948 some JSON text against another for equality.
949
950 array references
951 Perl array references become JSON arrays.
952
953 other references
954 Other unblessed references are generally not allowed and will cause
955 an exception to be thrown, except for references to the integers 0
956 and 1, which get turned into "false" and "true" atoms in JSON.
957
958 Since "JSON::XS" uses the boolean model from Types::Serialiser, you
959 can also "use Types::Serialiser" and then use
960 "Types::Serialiser::false" and "Types::Serialiser::true" to improve
961 readability.
962
963 use Types::Serialiser;
964 encode_json [\0, Types::Serialiser::true] # yields [false,true]
965
966 Types::Serialiser::true, Types::Serialiser::false
967 These special values from the Types::Serialiser module become JSON
968 true and JSON false values, respectively. You can also use "\1" and
969 "\0" directly if you want.
970
971 blessed objects
972 Blessed objects are not directly representable in JSON, but
973 "JSON::XS" allows various ways of handling objects. See "OBJECT
974 SERIALISATION", below, for details.
975
976 simple scalars
977 Simple Perl scalars (any scalar that is not a reference) are the
978 most difficult objects to encode: JSON::XS will encode undefined
979 scalars as JSON "null" values, scalars that have last been used in a
980 string context before encoding as JSON strings, and anything else as
981 number value:
982
983 # dump as number
984 encode_json [2] # yields [2]
985 encode_json [-3.0e17] # yields [-3e+17]
986 my $value = 5; encode_json [$value] # yields [5]
987
988 # used as string, so dump as string
989 print $value;
990 encode_json [$value] # yields ["5"]
991
992 # undef becomes null
993 encode_json [undef] # yields [null]
994
995 You can force the type to be a JSON string by stringifying it:
996
997 my $x = 3.1; # some variable containing a number
998 "$x"; # stringified
999 $x .= ""; # another, more awkward way to stringify
1000 print $x; # perl does it for you, too, quite often
1001
1002 You can force the type to be a JSON number by numifying it:
1003
1004 my $x = "3"; # some variable containing a string
1005 $x += 0; # numify it, ensuring it will be dumped as a number
1006 $x *= 1; # same thing, the choice is yours.
1007
1008 You can not currently force the type in other, less obscure, ways.
1009 Tell me if you need this capability (but don't forget to explain why
1010 it's needed :).
1011
1012 Note that numerical precision has the same meaning as under Perl (so
1013 binary to decimal conversion follows the same rules as in Perl,
1014 which can differ to other languages). Also, your perl interpreter
1015 might expose extensions to the floating point numbers of your
1016 platform, such as infinities or NaN's - these cannot be represented
1017 in JSON, and it is an error to pass those in.
1018
1019 OBJECT SERIALISATION
1020 As JSON cannot directly represent Perl objects, you have to choose
1021 between a pure JSON representation (without the ability to deserialise
1022 the object automatically again), and a nonstandard extension to the JSON
1023 syntax, tagged values.
1024
1025 SERIALISATION
1026 What happens when "JSON::XS" encounters a Perl object depends on the
1027 "allow_blessed", "convert_blessed" and "allow_tags" settings, which are
1028 used in this order:
1029
1030 1. "allow_tags" is enabled and the object has a "FREEZE" method.
1031 In this case, "JSON::XS" uses the Types::Serialiser object
1032 serialisation protocol to create a tagged JSON value, using a
1033 nonstandard extension to the JSON syntax.
1034
1035 This works by invoking the "FREEZE" method on the object, with the
1036 first argument being the object to serialise, and the second
1037 argument being the constant string "JSON" to distinguish it from
1038 other serialisers.
1039
1040 The "FREEZE" method can return any number of values (i.e. zero or
1041 more). These values and the paclkage/classname of the object will
1042 then be encoded as a tagged JSON value in the following format:
1043
1044 ("classname")[FREEZE return values...]
1045
1046 e.g.:
1047
1048 ("URI")["http://www.google.com/"]
1049 ("MyDate")[2013,10,29]
1050 ("ImageData::JPEG")["Z3...VlCg=="]
1051
1052 For example, the hypothetical "My::Object" "FREEZE" method might use
1053 the objects "type" and "id" members to encode the object:
1054
1055 sub My::Object::FREEZE {
1056 my ($self, $serialiser) = @_;
1057
1058 ($self->{type}, $self->{id})
1059 }
1060
1061 2. "convert_blessed" is enabled and the object has a "TO_JSON" method.
1062 In this case, the "TO_JSON" method of the object is invoked in
1063 scalar context. It must return a single scalar that can be directly
1064 encoded into JSON. This scalar replaces the object in the JSON text.
1065
1066 For example, the following "TO_JSON" method will convert all URI
1067 objects to JSON strings when serialised. The fatc that these values
1068 originally were URI objects is lost.
1069
1070 sub URI::TO_JSON {
1071 my ($uri) = @_;
1072 $uri->as_string
1073 }
1074
1075 3. "allow_blessed" is enabled.
1076 The object will be serialised as a JSON null value.
1077
1078 4. none of the above
1079 If none of the settings are enabled or the respective methods are
1080 missing, "JSON::XS" throws an exception.
1081
1082 DESERIALISATION
1083 For deserialisation there are only two cases to consider: either
1084 nonstandard tagging was used, in which case "allow_tags" decides, or
1085 objects cannot be automatically be deserialised, in which case you can
1086 use postprocessing or the "filter_json_object" or
1087 "filter_json_single_key_object" callbacks to get some real objects our
1088 of your JSON.
1089
1090 This section only considers the tagged value case: I a tagged JSON
1091 object is encountered during decoding and "allow_tags" is disabled, a
1092 parse error will result (as if tagged values were not part of the
1093 grammar).
1094
1095 If "allow_tags" is enabled, "JSON::XS" will look up the "THAW" method of
1096 the package/classname used during serialisation (it will not attempt to
1097 load the package as a Perl module). If there is no such method, the
1098 decoding will fail with an error.
1099
1100 Otherwise, the "THAW" method is invoked with the classname as first
1101 argument, the constant string "JSON" as second argument, and all the
1102 values from the JSON array (the values originally returned by the
1103 "FREEZE" method) as remaining arguments.
1104
1105 The method must then return the object. While technically you can return
1106 any Perl scalar, you might have to enable the "enable_nonref" setting to
1107 make that work in all cases, so better return an actual blessed
1108 reference.
1109
1110 As an example, let's implement a "THAW" function that regenerates the
1111 "My::Object" from the "FREEZE" example earlier:
1112
1113 sub My::Object::THAW {
1114 my ($class, $serialiser, $type, $id) = @_;
1115
1116 $class->new (type => $type, id => $id)
1117 }
1118
1119 ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES
1120 The interested reader might have seen a number of flags that signify
1121 encodings or codesets - "utf8", "latin1" and "ascii". There seems to be
1122 some confusion on what these do, so here is a short comparison:
1123
1124 "utf8" controls whether the JSON text created by "encode" (and expected
1125 by "decode") is UTF-8 encoded or not, while "latin1" and "ascii" only
1126 control whether "encode" escapes character values outside their
1127 respective codeset range. Neither of these flags conflict with each
1128 other, although some combinations make less sense than others.
1129
1130 Care has been taken to make all flags symmetrical with respect to
1131 "encode" and "decode", that is, texts encoded with any combination of
1132 these flag values will be correctly decoded when the same flags are used
1133 - in general, if you use different flag settings while encoding vs. when
1134 decoding you likely have a bug somewhere.
1135
1136 Below comes a verbose discussion of these flags. Note that a "codeset"
1137 is simply an abstract set of character-codepoint pairs, while an
1138 encoding takes those codepoint numbers and *encodes* them, in our case
1139 into octets. Unicode is (among other things) a codeset, UTF-8 is an
1140 encoding, and ISO-8859-1 (= latin 1) and ASCII are both codesets *and*
1141 encodings at the same time, which can be confusing.
1142
1143 "utf8" flag disabled
1144 When "utf8" is disabled (the default), then "encode"/"decode"
1145 generate and expect Unicode strings, that is, characters with high
1146 ordinal Unicode values (> 255) will be encoded as such characters,
1147 and likewise such characters are decoded as-is, no changes to them
1148 will be done, except "(re-)interpreting" them as Unicode codepoints
1149 or Unicode characters, respectively (to Perl, these are the same
1150 thing in strings unless you do funny/weird/dumb stuff).
1151
1152 This is useful when you want to do the encoding yourself (e.g. when
1153 you want to have UTF-16 encoded JSON texts) or when some other layer
1154 does the encoding for you (for example, when printing to a terminal
1155 using a filehandle that transparently encodes to UTF-8 you certainly
1156 do NOT want to UTF-8 encode your data first and have Perl encode it
1157 another time).
1158
1159 "utf8" flag enabled
1160 If the "utf8"-flag is enabled, "encode"/"decode" will encode all
1161 characters using the corresponding UTF-8 multi-byte sequence, and
1162 will expect your input strings to be encoded as UTF-8, that is, no
1163 "character" of the input string must have any value > 255, as UTF-8
1164 does not allow that.
1165
1166 The "utf8" flag therefore switches between two modes: disabled means
1167 you will get a Unicode string in Perl, enabled means you get an
1168 UTF-8 encoded octet/binary string in Perl.
1169
1170 "latin1" or "ascii" flags enabled
1171 With "latin1" (or "ascii") enabled, "encode" will escape characters
1172 with ordinal values > 255 (> 127 with "ascii") and encode the
1173 remaining characters as specified by the "utf8" flag.
1174
1175 If "utf8" is disabled, then the result is also correctly encoded in
1176 those character sets (as both are proper subsets of Unicode, meaning
1177 that a Unicode string with all character values < 256 is the same
1178 thing as a ISO-8859-1 string, and a Unicode string with all
1179 character values < 128 is the same thing as an ASCII string in
1180 Perl).
1181
1182 If "utf8" is enabled, you still get a correct UTF-8-encoded string,
1183 regardless of these flags, just some more characters will be escaped
1184 using "\uXXXX" then before.
1185
1186 Note that ISO-8859-1-*encoded* strings are not compatible with UTF-8
1187 encoding, while ASCII-encoded strings are. That is because the
1188 ISO-8859-1 encoding is NOT a subset of UTF-8 (despite the ISO-8859-1
1189 *codeset* being a subset of Unicode), while ASCII is.
1190
1191 Surprisingly, "decode" will ignore these flags and so treat all
1192 input values as governed by the "utf8" flag. If it is disabled, this
1193 allows you to decode ISO-8859-1- and ASCII-encoded strings, as both
1194 strict subsets of Unicode. If it is enabled, you can correctly
1195 decode UTF-8 encoded strings.
1196
1197 So neither "latin1" nor "ascii" are incompatible with the "utf8"
1198 flag - they only govern when the JSON output engine escapes a
1199 character or not.
1200
1201 The main use for "latin1" is to relatively efficiently store binary
1202 data as JSON, at the expense of breaking compatibility with most
1203 JSON decoders.
1204
1205 The main use for "ascii" is to force the output to not contain
1206 characters with values > 127, which means you can interpret the
1207 resulting string as UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, ASCII, KOI8-R or most about
1208 any character set and 8-bit-encoding, and still get the same data
1209 structure back. This is useful when your channel for JSON transfer
1210 is not 8-bit clean or the encoding might be mangled in between (e.g.
1211 in mail), and works because ASCII is a proper subset of most 8-bit
1212 and multibyte encodings in use in the world.
1213
1214 JSON and ECMAscript
1215 JSON syntax is based on how literals are represented in javascript (the
1216 not-standardised predecessor of ECMAscript) which is presumably why it
1217 is called "JavaScript Object Notation".
1218
1219 However, JSON is not a subset (and also not a superset of course) of
1220 ECMAscript (the standard) or javascript (whatever browsers actually
1221 implement).
1222
1223 If you want to use javascript's "eval" function to "parse" JSON, you
1224 might run into parse errors for valid JSON texts, or the resulting data
1225 structure might not be queryable:
1226
1227 One of the problems is that U+2028 and U+2029 are valid characters
1228 inside JSON strings, but are not allowed in ECMAscript string literals,
1229 so the following Perl fragment will not output something that can be
1230 guaranteed to be parsable by javascript's "eval":
1231
1232 use JSON::XS;
1233
1234 print encode_json [chr 0x2028];
1235
1236 The right fix for this is to use a proper JSON parser in your javascript
1237 programs, and not rely on "eval" (see for example Douglas Crockford's
1238 json2.js parser).
1239
1240 If this is not an option, you can, as a stop-gap measure, simply encode
1241 to ASCII-only JSON:
1242
1243 use JSON::XS;
1244
1245 print JSON::XS->new->ascii->encode ([chr 0x2028]);
1246
1247 Note that this will enlarge the resulting JSON text quite a bit if you
1248 have many non-ASCII characters. You might be tempted to run some regexes
1249 to only escape U+2028 and U+2029, e.g.:
1250
1251 # DO NOT USE THIS!
1252 my $json = JSON::XS->new->utf8->encode ([chr 0x2028]);
1253 $json =~ s/\xe2\x80\xa8/\\u2028/g; # escape U+2028
1254 $json =~ s/\xe2\x80\xa9/\\u2029/g; # escape U+2029
1255 print $json;
1256
1257 Note that *this is a bad idea*: the above only works for U+2028 and
1258 U+2029 and thus only for fully ECMAscript-compliant parsers. Many
1259 existing javascript implementations, however, have issues with other
1260 characters as well - using "eval" naively simply *will* cause problems.
1261
1262 Another problem is that some javascript implementations reserve some
1263 property names for their own purposes (which probably makes them
1264 non-ECMAscript-compliant). For example, Iceweasel reserves the
1265 "__proto__" property name for its own purposes.
1266
1267 If that is a problem, you could parse try to filter the resulting JSON
1268 output for these property strings, e.g.:
1269
1270 $json =~ s/"__proto__"\s*:/"__proto__renamed":/g;
1271
1272 This works because "__proto__" is not valid outside of strings, so every
1273 occurrence of ""__proto__"\s*:" must be a string used as property name.
1274
1275 If you know of other incompatibilities, please let me know.
1276
1277 JSON and YAML
1278 You often hear that JSON is a subset of YAML. This is, however, a mass
1279 hysteria(*) and very far from the truth (as of the time of this
1280 writing), so let me state it clearly: *in general, there is no way to
1281 configure JSON::XS to output a data structure as valid YAML* that works
1282 in all cases.
1283
1284 If you really must use JSON::XS to generate YAML, you should use this
1285 algorithm (subject to change in future versions):
1286
1287 my $to_yaml = JSON::XS->new->utf8->space_after (1);
1288 my $yaml = $to_yaml->encode ($ref) . "\n";
1289
1290 This will *usually* generate JSON texts that also parse as valid YAML.
1291 Please note that YAML has hardcoded limits on (simple) object key
1292 lengths that JSON doesn't have and also has different and incompatible
1293 unicode character escape syntax, so you should make sure that your hash
1294 keys are noticeably shorter than the 1024 "stream characters" YAML
1295 allows and that you do not have characters with codepoint values outside
1296 the Unicode BMP (basic multilingual page). YAML also does not allow "\/"
1297 sequences in strings (which JSON::XS does not *currently* generate, but
1298 other JSON generators might).
1299
1300 There might be other incompatibilities that I am not aware of (or the
1301 YAML specification has been changed yet again - it does so quite often).
1302 In general you should not try to generate YAML with a JSON generator or
1303 vice versa, or try to parse JSON with a YAML parser or vice versa:
1304 chances are high that you will run into severe interoperability problems
1305 when you least expect it.
1306
1307 (*) I have been pressured multiple times by Brian Ingerson (one of the
1308 authors of the YAML specification) to remove this paragraph, despite
1309 him acknowledging that the actual incompatibilities exist. As I was
1310 personally bitten by this "JSON is YAML" lie, I refused and said I
1311 will continue to educate people about these issues, so others do not
1312 run into the same problem again and again. After this, Brian called
1313 me a (quote)*complete and worthless idiot*(unquote).
1314
1315 In my opinion, instead of pressuring and insulting people who
1316 actually clarify issues with YAML and the wrong statements of some
1317 of its proponents, I would kindly suggest reading the JSON spec
1318 (which is not that difficult or long) and finally make YAML
1319 compatible to it, and educating users about the changes, instead of
1320 spreading lies about the real compatibility for many *years* and
1321 trying to silence people who point out that it isn't true.
1322
1323 Addendum/2009: the YAML 1.2 spec is still incompatible with JSON,
1324 even though the incompatibilities have been documented (and are
1325 known to Brian) for many years and the spec makes explicit claims
1326 that YAML is a superset of JSON. It would be so easy to fix, but
1327 apparently, bullying people and corrupting userdata is so much
1328 easier.
1329
1330 SPEED
1331 It seems that JSON::XS is surprisingly fast, as shown in the following
1332 tables. They have been generated with the help of the "eg/bench" program
1333 in the JSON::XS distribution, to make it easy to compare on your own
1334 system.
1335
1336 First comes a comparison between various modules using a very short
1337 single-line JSON string (also available at
1338 <http://dist.schmorp.de/misc/json/short.json>).
1339
1340 {"method": "handleMessage", "params": ["user1",
1341 "we were just talking"], "id": null, "array":[1,11,234,-5,1e5,1e7,
1342 1, 0]}
1343
1344 It shows the number of encodes/decodes per second (JSON::XS uses the
1345 functional interface, while JSON::XS/2 uses the OO interface with
1346 pretty-printing and hashkey sorting enabled, JSON::XS/3 enables shrink.
1347 JSON::DWIW/DS uses the deserialise function, while JSON::DWIW::FJ uses
1348 the from_json method). Higher is better:
1349
1350 module | encode | decode |
1351 --------------|------------|------------|
1352 JSON::DWIW/DS | 86302.551 | 102300.098 |
1353 JSON::DWIW/FJ | 86302.551 | 75983.768 |
1354 JSON::PP | 15827.562 | 6638.658 |
1355 JSON::Syck | 63358.066 | 47662.545 |
1356 JSON::XS | 511500.488 | 511500.488 |
1357 JSON::XS/2 | 291271.111 | 388361.481 |
1358 JSON::XS/3 | 361577.931 | 361577.931 |
1359 Storable | 66788.280 | 265462.278 |
1360 --------------+------------+------------+
1361
1362 That is, JSON::XS is almost six times faster than JSON::DWIW on
1363 encoding, about five times faster on decoding, and over thirty to
1364 seventy times faster than JSON's pure perl implementation. It also
1365 compares favourably to Storable for small amounts of data.
1366
1367 Using a longer test string (roughly 18KB, generated from Yahoo! Locals
1368 search API (<http://dist.schmorp.de/misc/json/long.json>).
1369
1370 module | encode | decode |
1371 --------------|------------|------------|
1372 JSON::DWIW/DS | 1647.927 | 2673.916 |
1373 JSON::DWIW/FJ | 1630.249 | 2596.128 |
1374 JSON::PP | 400.640 | 62.311 |
1375 JSON::Syck | 1481.040 | 1524.869 |
1376 JSON::XS | 20661.596 | 9541.183 |
1377 JSON::XS/2 | 10683.403 | 9416.938 |
1378 JSON::XS/3 | 20661.596 | 9400.054 |
1379 Storable | 19765.806 | 10000.725 |
1380 --------------+------------+------------+
1381
1382 Again, JSON::XS leads by far (except for Storable which non-surprisingly
1383 decodes a bit faster).
1384
1385 On large strings containing lots of high Unicode characters, some
1386 modules (such as JSON::PC) seem to decode faster than JSON::XS, but the
1387 result will be broken due to missing (or wrong) Unicode handling. Others
1388 refuse to decode or encode properly, so it was impossible to prepare a
1389 fair comparison table for that case.
1390
1391 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
1392 When you are using JSON in a protocol, talking to untrusted potentially
1393 hostile creatures requires relatively few measures.
1394
1395 First of all, your JSON decoder should be secure, that is, should not
1396 have any buffer overflows. Obviously, this module should ensure that and
1397 I am trying hard on making that true, but you never know.
1398
1399 Second, you need to avoid resource-starving attacks. That means you
1400 should limit the size of JSON texts you accept, or make sure then when
1401 your resources run out, that's just fine (e.g. by using a separate
1402 process that can crash safely). The size of a JSON text in octets or
1403 characters is usually a good indication of the size of the resources
1404 required to decode it into a Perl structure. While JSON::XS can check
1405 the size of the JSON text, it might be too late when you already have it
1406 in memory, so you might want to check the size before you accept the
1407 string.
1408
1409 Third, JSON::XS recurses using the C stack when decoding objects and
1410 arrays. The C stack is a limited resource: for instance, on my amd64
1411 machine with 8MB of stack size I can decode around 180k nested arrays
1412 but only 14k nested JSON objects (due to perl itself recursing deeply on
1413 croak to free the temporary). If that is exceeded, the program crashes.
1414 To be conservative, the default nesting limit is set to 512. If your
1415 process has a smaller stack, you should adjust this setting accordingly
1416 with the "max_depth" method.
1417
1418 Something else could bomb you, too, that I forgot to think of. In that
1419 case, you get to keep the pieces. I am always open for hints, though...
1420
1421 Also keep in mind that JSON::XS might leak contents of your Perl data
1422 structures in its error messages, so when you serialise sensitive
1423 information you might want to make sure that exceptions thrown by
1424 JSON::XS will not end up in front of untrusted eyes.
1425
1426 If you are using JSON::XS to return packets to consumption by JavaScript
1427 scripts in a browser you should have a look at
1428 <http://blog.archive.jpsykes.com/47/practical-csrf-and-json-security/>
1429 to see whether you are vulnerable to some common attack vectors (which
1430 really are browser design bugs, but it is still you who will have to
1431 deal with it, as major browser developers care only for features, not
1432 about getting security right).
1433
1434 INTEROPERABILITY WITH OTHER MODULES
1435 "JSON::XS" uses the Types::Serialiser module to provide boolean
1436 constants. That means that the JSON true and false values will be
1437 comaptible to true and false values of iother modules that do the same,
1438 such as JSON::PP and CBOR::XS.
1439
1440 THREADS
1441 This module is *not* guaranteed to be thread safe and there are no plans
1442 to change this until Perl gets thread support (as opposed to the
1443 horribly slow so-called "threads" which are simply slow and bloated
1444 process simulations - use fork, it's *much* faster, cheaper, better).
1445
1446 (It might actually work, but you have been warned).
1447
1448 THE PERILS OF SETLOCALE
1449 Sometimes people avoid the Perl locale support and directly call the
1450 system's setlocale function with "LC_ALL".
1451
1452 This breaks both perl and modules such as JSON::XS, as stringification
1453 of numbers no longer works correctly (e.g. "$x = 0.1; print "$x"+1"
1454 might print 1, and JSON::XS might output illegal JSON as JSON::XS relies
1455 on perl to stringify numbers).
1456
1457 The solution is simple: don't call "setlocale", or use it for only those
1458 categories you need, such as "LC_MESSAGES" or "LC_CTYPE".
1459
1460 If you need "LC_NUMERIC", you should enable it only around the code that
1461 actually needs it (avoiding stringification of numbers), and restore it
1462 afterwards.
1463
1464 BUGS
1465 While the goal of this module is to be correct, that unfortunately does
1466 not mean it's bug-free, only that I think its design is bug-free. If you
1467 keep reporting bugs they will be fixed swiftly, though.
1468
1469 Please refrain from using rt.cpan.org or any other bug reporting
1470 service. I put the contact address into my modules for a reason.
1471
1472 SEE ALSO
1473 The json_xs command line utility for quick experiments.
1474
1475 AUTHOR
1476 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
1477 http://home.schmorp.de/
1478