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Revision: 1.44
Committed: Mon Jun 25 04:08:17 2007 UTC (16 years, 10 months ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.43: +34 -2 lines
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# User Rev Content
1 root 1.1 =head1 NAME
2    
3     JSON::XS - JSON serialising/deserialising, done correctly and fast
4    
5     =head1 SYNOPSIS
6    
7     use JSON::XS;
8    
9 root 1.22 # exported functions, they croak on error
10     # and expect/generate UTF-8
11 root 1.12
12     $utf8_encoded_json_text = to_json $perl_hash_or_arrayref;
13     $perl_hash_or_arrayref = from_json $utf8_encoded_json_text;
14    
15 root 1.22 # objToJson and jsonToObj aliases to to_json and from_json
16     # are exported for compatibility to the JSON module,
17     # but should not be used in new code.
18 root 1.21
19 root 1.22 # OO-interface
20 root 1.12
21     $coder = JSON::XS->new->ascii->pretty->allow_nonref;
22     $pretty_printed_unencoded = $coder->encode ($perl_scalar);
23     $perl_scalar = $coder->decode ($unicode_json_text);
24    
25 root 1.1 =head1 DESCRIPTION
26    
27 root 1.2 This module converts Perl data structures to JSON and vice versa. Its
28     primary goal is to be I<correct> and its secondary goal is to be
29     I<fast>. To reach the latter goal it was written in C.
30    
31     As this is the n-th-something JSON module on CPAN, what was the reason
32     to write yet another JSON module? While it seems there are many JSON
33     modules, none of them correctly handle all corner cases, and in most cases
34     their maintainers are unresponsive, gone missing, or not listening to bug
35     reports for other reasons.
36    
37     See COMPARISON, below, for a comparison to some other JSON modules.
38    
39 root 1.10 See MAPPING, below, on how JSON::XS maps perl values to JSON values and
40     vice versa.
41    
42 root 1.2 =head2 FEATURES
43    
44 root 1.1 =over 4
45    
46 root 1.21 =item * correct unicode handling
47 root 1.2
48 root 1.10 This module knows how to handle Unicode, and even documents how and when
49     it does so.
50 root 1.2
51     =item * round-trip integrity
52    
53     When you serialise a perl data structure using only datatypes supported
54     by JSON, the deserialised data structure is identical on the Perl level.
55 root 1.21 (e.g. the string "2.0" doesn't suddenly become "2" just because it looks
56     like a number).
57 root 1.2
58     =item * strict checking of JSON correctness
59    
60 root 1.16 There is no guessing, no generating of illegal JSON texts by default,
61 root 1.10 and only JSON is accepted as input by default (the latter is a security
62     feature).
63 root 1.2
64     =item * fast
65    
66 root 1.10 Compared to other JSON modules, this module compares favourably in terms
67     of speed, too.
68 root 1.2
69     =item * simple to use
70    
71     This module has both a simple functional interface as well as an OO
72     interface.
73    
74     =item * reasonably versatile output formats
75    
76 root 1.10 You can choose between the most compact guarenteed single-line format
77 root 1.21 possible (nice for simple line-based protocols), a pure-ascii format
78     (for when your transport is not 8-bit clean, still supports the whole
79     unicode range), or a pretty-printed format (for when you want to read that
80     stuff). Or you can combine those features in whatever way you like.
81 root 1.2
82     =back
83    
84 root 1.1 =cut
85    
86     package JSON::XS;
87    
88 root 1.20 use strict;
89    
90 root 1.44 our $VERSION = '1.4';
91 root 1.43 our @ISA = qw(Exporter);
92 root 1.1
93 root 1.43 our @EXPORT = qw(to_json from_json objToJson jsonToObj);
94 root 1.1
95 root 1.43 use Exporter;
96     use XSLoader;
97 root 1.1
98 root 1.2 =head1 FUNCTIONAL INTERFACE
99    
100     The following convinience methods are provided by this module. They are
101     exported by default:
102    
103     =over 4
104    
105 root 1.16 =item $json_text = to_json $perl_scalar
106 root 1.2
107     Converts the given Perl data structure (a simple scalar or a reference to
108     a hash or array) to a UTF-8 encoded, binary string (that is, the string contains
109     octets only). Croaks on error.
110    
111 root 1.16 This function call is functionally identical to:
112 root 1.2
113 root 1.16 $json_text = JSON::XS->new->utf8->encode ($perl_scalar)
114    
115     except being faster.
116    
117     =item $perl_scalar = from_json $json_text
118 root 1.2
119     The opposite of C<to_json>: expects an UTF-8 (binary) string and tries to
120 root 1.16 parse that as an UTF-8 encoded JSON text, returning the resulting simple
121 root 1.2 scalar or reference. Croaks on error.
122    
123 root 1.16 This function call is functionally identical to:
124    
125     $perl_scalar = JSON::XS->new->utf8->decode ($json_text)
126    
127     except being faster.
128 root 1.2
129 root 1.43 =item $is_boolean = JSON::XS::is_bool $scalar
130    
131     Returns true if the passed scalar represents either JSON::XS::true or
132     JSON::XS::false, two constants that act like C<1> and C<0>, respectively
133     and are used to represent JSON C<true> and C<false> values in Perl.
134    
135     See MAPPING, below, for more information on how JSON values are mapped to
136     Perl.
137    
138 root 1.2 =back
139    
140 root 1.23
141 root 1.2 =head1 OBJECT-ORIENTED INTERFACE
142    
143     The object oriented interface lets you configure your own encoding or
144     decoding style, within the limits of supported formats.
145    
146     =over 4
147    
148     =item $json = new JSON::XS
149    
150     Creates a new JSON::XS object that can be used to de/encode JSON
151     strings. All boolean flags described below are by default I<disabled>.
152 root 1.1
153 root 1.2 The mutators for flags all return the JSON object again and thus calls can
154     be chained:
155    
156 root 1.16 my $json = JSON::XS->new->utf8->space_after->encode ({a => [1,2]})
157 root 1.3 => {"a": [1, 2]}
158 root 1.2
159 root 1.7 =item $json = $json->ascii ([$enable])
160 root 1.2
161 root 1.16 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will not
162     generate characters outside the code range C<0..127> (which is ASCII). Any
163     unicode characters outside that range will be escaped using either a
164     single \uXXXX (BMP characters) or a double \uHHHH\uLLLLL escape sequence,
165 root 1.32 as per RFC4627. The resulting encoded JSON text can be treated as a native
166     unicode string, an ascii-encoded, latin1-encoded or UTF-8 encoded string,
167     or any other superset of ASCII.
168 root 1.2
169     If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not escape Unicode
170 root 1.33 characters unless required by the JSON syntax or other flags. This results
171     in a faster and more compact format.
172    
173     The main use for this flag is to produce JSON texts that can be
174     transmitted over a 7-bit channel, as the encoded JSON texts will not
175     contain any 8 bit characters.
176 root 1.2
177 root 1.16 JSON::XS->new->ascii (1)->encode ([chr 0x10401])
178     => ["\ud801\udc01"]
179 root 1.3
180 root 1.33 =item $json = $json->latin1 ([$enable])
181    
182     If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will encode
183     the resulting JSON text as latin1 (or iso-8859-1), escaping any characters
184     outside the code range C<0..255>. The resulting string can be treated as a
185     latin1-encoded JSON text or a native unicode string. The C<decode> method
186     will not be affected in any way by this flag, as C<decode> by default
187     expects unicode, which is a strict superset of latin1.
188    
189     If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not escape Unicode
190     characters unless required by the JSON syntax or other flags.
191    
192     The main use for this flag is efficiently encoding binary data as JSON
193     text, as most octets will not be escaped, resulting in a smaller encoded
194     size. The disadvantage is that the resulting JSON text is encoded
195     in latin1 (and must correctly be treated as such when storing and
196     transfering), a rare encoding for JSON. It is therefore most useful when
197     you want to store data structures known to contain binary data efficiently
198     in files or databases, not when talking to other JSON encoders/decoders.
199    
200     JSON::XS->new->latin1->encode (["\x{89}\x{abc}"]
201     => ["\x{89}\\u0abc"] # (perl syntax, U+abc escaped, U+89 not)
202    
203 root 1.7 =item $json = $json->utf8 ([$enable])
204 root 1.2
205 root 1.7 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will encode
206 root 1.16 the JSON result into UTF-8, as required by many protocols, while the
207 root 1.7 C<decode> method expects to be handled an UTF-8-encoded string. Please
208     note that UTF-8-encoded strings do not contain any characters outside the
209 root 1.16 range C<0..255>, they are thus useful for bytewise/binary I/O. In future
210     versions, enabling this option might enable autodetection of the UTF-16
211     and UTF-32 encoding families, as described in RFC4627.
212 root 1.2
213     If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will return the JSON
214     string as a (non-encoded) unicode string, while C<decode> expects thus a
215     unicode string. Any decoding or encoding (e.g. to UTF-8 or UTF-16) needs
216     to be done yourself, e.g. using the Encode module.
217    
218 root 1.16 Example, output UTF-16BE-encoded JSON:
219    
220     use Encode;
221     $jsontext = encode "UTF-16BE", JSON::XS->new->encode ($object);
222    
223     Example, decode UTF-32LE-encoded JSON:
224    
225     use Encode;
226     $object = JSON::XS->new->decode (decode "UTF-32LE", $jsontext);
227 root 1.12
228 root 1.7 =item $json = $json->pretty ([$enable])
229 root 1.2
230     This enables (or disables) all of the C<indent>, C<space_before> and
231 root 1.3 C<space_after> (and in the future possibly more) flags in one call to
232 root 1.2 generate the most readable (or most compact) form possible.
233    
234 root 1.12 Example, pretty-print some simple structure:
235    
236 root 1.3 my $json = JSON::XS->new->pretty(1)->encode ({a => [1,2]})
237     =>
238     {
239     "a" : [
240     1,
241     2
242     ]
243     }
244    
245 root 1.7 =item $json = $json->indent ([$enable])
246 root 1.2
247 root 1.7 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will use a multiline
248 root 1.2 format as output, putting every array member or object/hash key-value pair
249     into its own line, identing them properly.
250    
251     If C<$enable> is false, no newlines or indenting will be produced, and the
252 root 1.16 resulting JSON text is guarenteed not to contain any C<newlines>.
253 root 1.2
254 root 1.16 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts.
255 root 1.2
256 root 1.7 =item $json = $json->space_before ([$enable])
257 root 1.2
258 root 1.7 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will add an extra
259 root 1.2 optional space before the C<:> separating keys from values in JSON objects.
260    
261     If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not add any extra
262     space at those places.
263    
264 root 1.16 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts. You will also
265     most likely combine this setting with C<space_after>.
266 root 1.2
267 root 1.12 Example, space_before enabled, space_after and indent disabled:
268    
269     {"key" :"value"}
270    
271 root 1.7 =item $json = $json->space_after ([$enable])
272 root 1.2
273 root 1.7 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will add an extra
274 root 1.2 optional space after the C<:> separating keys from values in JSON objects
275     and extra whitespace after the C<,> separating key-value pairs and array
276     members.
277    
278     If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not add any extra
279     space at those places.
280    
281 root 1.16 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts.
282 root 1.2
283 root 1.12 Example, space_before and indent disabled, space_after enabled:
284    
285     {"key": "value"}
286    
287 root 1.7 =item $json = $json->canonical ([$enable])
288 root 1.2
289 root 1.7 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will output JSON objects
290 root 1.2 by sorting their keys. This is adding a comparatively high overhead.
291    
292     If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will output key-value
293     pairs in the order Perl stores them (which will likely change between runs
294     of the same script).
295    
296     This option is useful if you want the same data structure to be encoded as
297 root 1.16 the same JSON text (given the same overall settings). If it is disabled,
298 root 1.2 the same hash migh be encoded differently even if contains the same data,
299     as key-value pairs have no inherent ordering in Perl.
300    
301 root 1.16 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts.
302 root 1.2
303 root 1.7 =item $json = $json->allow_nonref ([$enable])
304 root 1.3
305 root 1.7 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method can convert a
306 root 1.3 non-reference into its corresponding string, number or null JSON value,
307     which is an extension to RFC4627. Likewise, C<decode> will accept those JSON
308     values instead of croaking.
309    
310     If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will croak if it isn't
311 root 1.16 passed an arrayref or hashref, as JSON texts must either be an object
312 root 1.3 or array. Likewise, C<decode> will croak if given something that is not a
313     JSON object or array.
314    
315 root 1.12 Example, encode a Perl scalar as JSON value with enabled C<allow_nonref>,
316     resulting in an invalid JSON text:
317    
318     JSON::XS->new->allow_nonref->encode ("Hello, World!")
319     => "Hello, World!"
320    
321 root 1.44 =item $json = $json->allow_blessed ([$enable])
322    
323     If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will not
324     barf when it encounters a blessed reference. Instead, the value of the
325     B<convert_blessed> option will decide wether C<null> (C<convert_blessed>
326     disabled or no C<to_json> method found) or a representation of the
327     object (C<convert_blessed> enabled and C<to_json> method found) is being
328     encoded. Has no effect on C<decode>.
329    
330     If C<$enable> is false (the default), then C<encode> will throw an
331     exception when it encounters a blessed object.
332    
333     =item $json = $json->convert_blessed ([$enable])
334    
335     If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then C<encode>, upon encountering a
336     blessed object, will check for the availability of the C<TO_JSON> method
337     on the object's class. If found, it will be called in scalar context
338     and the resulting scalar will be encoded instead of the object. If no
339     C<TO_JSON> method is found, the value of C<allow_blessed> will decide what
340     to do.
341    
342     The C<TO_JSON> method may safely call die if it wants. If C<TO_JSON>
343     returns other blessed objects, those will be handled in the same
344     way. C<TO_JSON> must take care of not causing an endless recursion cycle
345     (== crash) in this case. The name of C<TO_JSON> was chosen because other
346     methods called by the Perl core (== not the user of the object) are
347     usually in upper case letters and to avoid collisions with the C<to_json>
348     function.
349    
350     If C<$enable> is false, then the C<allow_blessed> setting will decide what
351     to do when a blessed object is found.
352    
353 root 1.7 =item $json = $json->shrink ([$enable])
354    
355     Perl usually over-allocates memory a bit when allocating space for
356 root 1.24 strings. This flag optionally resizes strings generated by either
357 root 1.7 C<encode> or C<decode> to their minimum size possible. This can save
358 root 1.16 memory when your JSON texts are either very very long or you have many
359 root 1.8 short strings. It will also try to downgrade any strings to octet-form
360     if possible: perl stores strings internally either in an encoding called
361     UTF-X or in octet-form. The latter cannot store everything but uses less
362 root 1.24 space in general (and some buggy Perl or C code might even rely on that
363     internal representation being used).
364 root 1.7
365 root 1.24 The actual definition of what shrink does might change in future versions,
366     but it will always try to save space at the expense of time.
367    
368     If C<$enable> is true (or missing), the string returned by C<encode> will
369     be shrunk-to-fit, while all strings generated by C<decode> will also be
370     shrunk-to-fit.
371 root 1.7
372     If C<$enable> is false, then the normal perl allocation algorithms are used.
373     If you work with your data, then this is likely to be faster.
374    
375     In the future, this setting might control other things, such as converting
376     strings that look like integers or floats into integers or floats
377     internally (there is no difference on the Perl level), saving space.
378    
379 root 1.23 =item $json = $json->max_depth ([$maximum_nesting_depth])
380    
381 root 1.28 Sets the maximum nesting level (default C<512>) accepted while encoding
382 root 1.23 or decoding. If the JSON text or Perl data structure has an equal or
383     higher nesting level then this limit, then the encoder and decoder will
384     stop and croak at that point.
385    
386     Nesting level is defined by number of hash- or arrayrefs that the encoder
387     needs to traverse to reach a given point or the number of C<{> or C<[>
388     characters without their matching closing parenthesis crossed to reach a
389     given character in a string.
390    
391     Setting the maximum depth to one disallows any nesting, so that ensures
392     that the object is only a single hash/object or array.
393    
394     The argument to C<max_depth> will be rounded up to the next nearest power
395     of two.
396    
397     See SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS, below, for more info on why this is useful.
398    
399 root 1.16 =item $json_text = $json->encode ($perl_scalar)
400 root 1.2
401     Converts the given Perl data structure (a simple scalar or a reference
402     to a hash or array) to its JSON representation. Simple scalars will be
403     converted into JSON string or number sequences, while references to arrays
404     become JSON arrays and references to hashes become JSON objects. Undefined
405     Perl values (e.g. C<undef>) become JSON C<null> values. Neither C<true>
406     nor C<false> values will be generated.
407 root 1.1
408 root 1.16 =item $perl_scalar = $json->decode ($json_text)
409 root 1.1
410 root 1.16 The opposite of C<encode>: expects a JSON text and tries to parse it,
411 root 1.2 returning the resulting simple scalar or reference. Croaks on error.
412 root 1.1
413 root 1.2 JSON numbers and strings become simple Perl scalars. JSON arrays become
414     Perl arrayrefs and JSON objects become Perl hashrefs. C<true> becomes
415     C<1>, C<false> becomes C<0> and C<null> becomes C<undef>.
416 root 1.1
417 root 1.34 =item ($perl_scalar, $characters) = $json->decode_prefix ($json_text)
418    
419     This works like the C<decode> method, but instead of raising an exception
420     when there is trailing garbage after the first JSON object, it will
421     silently stop parsing there and return the number of characters consumed
422     so far.
423    
424     This is useful if your JSON texts are not delimited by an outer protocol
425     (which is not the brightest thing to do in the first place) and you need
426     to know where the JSON text ends.
427    
428     JSON::XS->new->decode_prefix ("[1] the tail")
429     => ([], 3)
430    
431 root 1.1 =back
432    
433 root 1.23
434 root 1.10 =head1 MAPPING
435    
436     This section describes how JSON::XS maps Perl values to JSON values and
437     vice versa. These mappings are designed to "do the right thing" in most
438     circumstances automatically, preserving round-tripping characteristics
439     (what you put in comes out as something equivalent).
440    
441     For the more enlightened: note that in the following descriptions,
442     lowercase I<perl> refers to the Perl interpreter, while uppcercase I<Perl>
443     refers to the abstract Perl language itself.
444    
445 root 1.39
446 root 1.10 =head2 JSON -> PERL
447    
448     =over 4
449    
450     =item object
451    
452     A JSON object becomes a reference to a hash in Perl. No ordering of object
453 root 1.14 keys is preserved (JSON does not preserver object key ordering itself).
454 root 1.10
455     =item array
456    
457     A JSON array becomes a reference to an array in Perl.
458    
459     =item string
460    
461     A JSON string becomes a string scalar in Perl - Unicode codepoints in JSON
462     are represented by the same codepoints in the Perl string, so no manual
463     decoding is necessary.
464    
465     =item number
466    
467     A JSON number becomes either an integer or numeric (floating point)
468     scalar in perl, depending on its range and any fractional parts. On the
469     Perl level, there is no difference between those as Perl handles all the
470     conversion details, but an integer may take slightly less memory and might
471     represent more values exactly than (floating point) numbers.
472    
473     =item true, false
474    
475 root 1.43 These JSON atoms become C<JSON::XS::true> and C<JSON::XS::false>,
476     respectively. They are overloaded to act almost exactly like the numbers
477     C<1> and C<0>. You can check wether a scalar is a JSON boolean by using
478     the C<JSON::XS::is_bool> function.
479 root 1.10
480     =item null
481    
482     A JSON null atom becomes C<undef> in Perl.
483    
484     =back
485    
486 root 1.39
487 root 1.10 =head2 PERL -> JSON
488    
489     The mapping from Perl to JSON is slightly more difficult, as Perl is a
490     truly typeless language, so we can only guess which JSON type is meant by
491     a Perl value.
492    
493     =over 4
494    
495     =item hash references
496    
497     Perl hash references become JSON objects. As there is no inherent ordering
498 root 1.25 in hash keys (or JSON objects), they will usually be encoded in a
499     pseudo-random order that can change between runs of the same program but
500     stays generally the same within a single run of a program. JSON::XS can
501     optionally sort the hash keys (determined by the I<canonical> flag), so
502     the same datastructure will serialise to the same JSON text (given same
503     settings and version of JSON::XS), but this incurs a runtime overhead
504     and is only rarely useful, e.g. when you want to compare some JSON text
505     against another for equality.
506 root 1.10
507     =item array references
508    
509     Perl array references become JSON arrays.
510    
511 root 1.25 =item other references
512    
513     Other unblessed references are generally not allowed and will cause an
514     exception to be thrown, except for references to the integers C<0> and
515     C<1>, which get turned into C<false> and C<true> atoms in JSON. You can
516     also use C<JSON::XS::false> and C<JSON::XS::true> to improve readability.
517    
518     to_json [\0,JSON::XS::true] # yields [false,true]
519    
520 root 1.43 =item JSON::XS::true, JSON::XS::false
521    
522     These special values become JSON true and JSON false values,
523     respectively. You cna alos use C<\1> and C<\0> directly if you want.
524    
525 root 1.10 =item blessed objects
526    
527     Blessed objects are not allowed. JSON::XS currently tries to encode their
528     underlying representation (hash- or arrayref), but this behaviour might
529     change in future versions.
530    
531     =item simple scalars
532    
533     Simple Perl scalars (any scalar that is not a reference) are the most
534     difficult objects to encode: JSON::XS will encode undefined scalars as
535     JSON null value, scalars that have last been used in a string context
536     before encoding as JSON strings and anything else as number value:
537    
538     # dump as number
539     to_json [2] # yields [2]
540     to_json [-3.0e17] # yields [-3e+17]
541     my $value = 5; to_json [$value] # yields [5]
542    
543     # used as string, so dump as string
544     print $value;
545     to_json [$value] # yields ["5"]
546    
547     # undef becomes null
548     to_json [undef] # yields [null]
549    
550     You can force the type to be a string by stringifying it:
551    
552     my $x = 3.1; # some variable containing a number
553     "$x"; # stringified
554     $x .= ""; # another, more awkward way to stringify
555     print $x; # perl does it for you, too, quite often
556    
557     You can force the type to be a number by numifying it:
558    
559     my $x = "3"; # some variable containing a string
560     $x += 0; # numify it, ensuring it will be dumped as a number
561     $x *= 1; # same thing, the choise is yours.
562    
563     You can not currently output JSON booleans or force the type in other,
564     less obscure, ways. Tell me if you need this capability.
565    
566     =back
567    
568 root 1.23
569 root 1.3 =head1 COMPARISON
570    
571     As already mentioned, this module was created because none of the existing
572     JSON modules could be made to work correctly. First I will describe the
573     problems (or pleasures) I encountered with various existing JSON modules,
574 root 1.4 followed by some benchmark values. JSON::XS was designed not to suffer
575     from any of these problems or limitations.
576 root 1.3
577     =over 4
578    
579 root 1.5 =item JSON 1.07
580 root 1.3
581     Slow (but very portable, as it is written in pure Perl).
582    
583     Undocumented/buggy Unicode handling (how JSON handles unicode values is
584     undocumented. One can get far by feeding it unicode strings and doing
585     en-/decoding oneself, but unicode escapes are not working properly).
586    
587     No roundtripping (strings get clobbered if they look like numbers, e.g.
588     the string C<2.0> will encode to C<2.0> instead of C<"2.0">, and that will
589     decode into the number 2.
590    
591 root 1.5 =item JSON::PC 0.01
592 root 1.3
593     Very fast.
594    
595     Undocumented/buggy Unicode handling.
596    
597     No roundtripping.
598    
599 root 1.4 Has problems handling many Perl values (e.g. regex results and other magic
600     values will make it croak).
601 root 1.3
602     Does not even generate valid JSON (C<{1,2}> gets converted to C<{1:2}>
603 root 1.16 which is not a valid JSON text.
604 root 1.3
605     Unmaintained (maintainer unresponsive for many months, bugs are not
606     getting fixed).
607    
608 root 1.5 =item JSON::Syck 0.21
609 root 1.3
610     Very buggy (often crashes).
611    
612 root 1.4 Very inflexible (no human-readable format supported, format pretty much
613     undocumented. I need at least a format for easy reading by humans and a
614     single-line compact format for use in a protocol, and preferably a way to
615 root 1.16 generate ASCII-only JSON texts).
616 root 1.3
617     Completely broken (and confusingly documented) Unicode handling (unicode
618     escapes are not working properly, you need to set ImplicitUnicode to
619     I<different> values on en- and decoding to get symmetric behaviour).
620    
621     No roundtripping (simple cases work, but this depends on wether the scalar
622     value was used in a numeric context or not).
623    
624     Dumping hashes may skip hash values depending on iterator state.
625    
626     Unmaintained (maintainer unresponsive for many months, bugs are not
627     getting fixed).
628    
629     Does not check input for validity (i.e. will accept non-JSON input and
630     return "something" instead of raising an exception. This is a security
631     issue: imagine two banks transfering money between each other using
632     JSON. One bank might parse a given non-JSON request and deduct money,
633     while the other might reject the transaction with a syntax error. While a
634     good protocol will at least recover, that is extra unnecessary work and
635     the transaction will still not succeed).
636    
637 root 1.5 =item JSON::DWIW 0.04
638 root 1.3
639     Very fast. Very natural. Very nice.
640    
641     Undocumented unicode handling (but the best of the pack. Unicode escapes
642     still don't get parsed properly).
643    
644     Very inflexible.
645    
646     No roundtripping.
647    
648 root 1.16 Does not generate valid JSON texts (key strings are often unquoted, empty keys
649 root 1.4 result in nothing being output)
650    
651 root 1.3 Does not check input for validity.
652    
653     =back
654    
655 root 1.39
656     =head2 JSON and YAML
657    
658     You often hear that JSON is a subset (or a close subset) of YAML. This is,
659     however, a mass hysteria and very far from the truth. In general, there is
660     no way to configure JSON::XS to output a data structure as valid YAML.
661    
662 root 1.41 If you really must use JSON::XS to generate YAML, you should use this
663 root 1.39 algorithm (subject to change in future versions):
664    
665     my $to_yaml = JSON::XS->new->utf8->space_after (1);
666     my $yaml = $to_yaml->encode ($ref) . "\n";
667    
668     This will usually generate JSON texts that also parse as valid
669 root 1.41 YAML. Please note that YAML has hardcoded limits on (simple) object key
670     lengths that JSON doesn't have, so you should make sure that your hash
671     keys are noticably shorter than the 1024 characters YAML allows.
672 root 1.39
673     There might be other incompatibilities that I am not aware of. In general
674     you should not try to generate YAML with a JSON generator or vice versa,
675 root 1.41 or try to parse JSON with a YAML parser or vice versa: chances are high
676     that you will run into severe interoperability problems.
677 root 1.39
678    
679 root 1.3 =head2 SPEED
680    
681 root 1.4 It seems that JSON::XS is surprisingly fast, as shown in the following
682     tables. They have been generated with the help of the C<eg/bench> program
683     in the JSON::XS distribution, to make it easy to compare on your own
684     system.
685    
686 root 1.37 First comes a comparison between various modules using a very short
687     single-line JSON string:
688 root 1.18
689 root 1.37 {"method": "handleMessage", "params": ["user1", "we were just talking"], \
690 root 1.38 "id": null, "array":[1,11,234,-5,1e5,1e7, true, false]}
691 root 1.18
692 root 1.39 It shows the number of encodes/decodes per second (JSON::XS uses
693     the functional interface, while JSON::XS/2 uses the OO interface
694     with pretty-printing and hashkey sorting enabled, JSON::XS/3 enables
695     shrink). Higher is better:
696 root 1.4
697     module | encode | decode |
698     -----------|------------|------------|
699 root 1.38 JSON | 7645.468 | 4208.613 |
700 root 1.40 JSON::DWIW | 40721.398 | 77101.176 |
701 root 1.38 JSON::PC | 65948.176 | 78251.940 |
702 root 1.40 JSON::Syck | 22844.793 | 26479.192 |
703 root 1.38 JSON::XS | 388361.481 | 199728.762 |
704     JSON::XS/2 | 218453.333 | 192399.266 |
705     JSON::XS/3 | 338250.323 | 192399.266 |
706 root 1.40 Storable | 15779.925 | 14169.946 |
707 root 1.4 -----------+------------+------------+
708    
709 root 1.37 That is, JSON::XS is about five times faster than JSON::DWIW on encoding,
710 root 1.38 about three times faster on decoding, and over fourty times faster
711 root 1.37 than JSON, even with pretty-printing and key sorting. It also compares
712     favourably to Storable for small amounts of data.
713 root 1.4
714 root 1.13 Using a longer test string (roughly 18KB, generated from Yahoo! Locals
715 root 1.4 search API (http://nanoref.com/yahooapis/mgPdGg):
716    
717     module | encode | decode |
718     -----------|------------|------------|
719 root 1.37 JSON | 254.685 | 37.665 |
720 root 1.40 JSON::DWIW | 843.343 | 1049.731 |
721 root 1.37 JSON::PC | 3602.116 | 2307.352 |
722 root 1.40 JSON::Syck | 505.107 | 787.899 |
723     JSON::XS | 5747.196 | 3690.220 |
724     JSON::XS/2 | 3968.121 | 3676.634 |
725     JSON::XS/3 | 6105.246 | 3662.508 |
726     Storable | 4417.337 | 5285.161 |
727 root 1.4 -----------+------------+------------+
728    
729 root 1.40 Again, JSON::XS leads by far (except for Storable which non-surprisingly
730     decodes faster).
731 root 1.4
732 root 1.18 On large strings containing lots of high unicode characters, some modules
733     (such as JSON::PC) seem to decode faster than JSON::XS, but the result
734     will be broken due to missing (or wrong) unicode handling. Others refuse
735     to decode or encode properly, so it was impossible to prepare a fair
736     comparison table for that case.
737 root 1.13
738 root 1.11
739 root 1.23 =head1 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
740    
741     When you are using JSON in a protocol, talking to untrusted potentially
742     hostile creatures requires relatively few measures.
743    
744     First of all, your JSON decoder should be secure, that is, should not have
745     any buffer overflows. Obviously, this module should ensure that and I am
746     trying hard on making that true, but you never know.
747    
748     Second, you need to avoid resource-starving attacks. That means you should
749     limit the size of JSON texts you accept, or make sure then when your
750     resources run out, thats just fine (e.g. by using a separate process that
751     can crash safely). The size of a JSON text in octets or characters is
752     usually a good indication of the size of the resources required to decode
753     it into a Perl structure.
754    
755     Third, JSON::XS recurses using the C stack when decoding objects and
756     arrays. The C stack is a limited resource: for instance, on my amd64
757 root 1.28 machine with 8MB of stack size I can decode around 180k nested arrays but
758     only 14k nested JSON objects (due to perl itself recursing deeply on croak
759     to free the temporary). If that is exceeded, the program crashes. to be
760     conservative, the default nesting limit is set to 512. If your process
761     has a smaller stack, you should adjust this setting accordingly with the
762     C<max_depth> method.
763 root 1.23
764     And last but least, something else could bomb you that I forgot to think
765 root 1.30 of. In that case, you get to keep the pieces. I am always open for hints,
766 root 1.23 though...
767    
768 root 1.42 If you are using JSON::XS to return packets to consumption
769     by javascript scripts in a browser you should have a look at
770     L<http://jpsykes.com/47/practical-csrf-and-json-security> to see wether
771     you are vulnerable to some common attack vectors (which really are browser
772     design bugs, but it is still you who will have to deal with it, as major
773     browser developers care only for features, not about doing security
774     right).
775    
776 root 1.11
777 root 1.4 =head1 BUGS
778    
779     While the goal of this module is to be correct, that unfortunately does
780     not mean its bug-free, only that I think its design is bug-free. It is
781 root 1.23 still relatively early in its development. If you keep reporting bugs they
782     will be fixed swiftly, though.
783 root 1.4
784 root 1.2 =cut
785    
786 root 1.43 our $true = do { bless \(my $dummy = 1), "JSON::XS::Boolean" };
787     our $false = do { bless \(my $dummy = 0), "JSON::XS::Boolean" };
788    
789     sub true() { $true }
790     sub false() { $false }
791    
792     sub is_bool($) {
793     UNIVERSAL::isa $_[0], "JSON::XS::Boolean"
794 root 1.44 # or UNIVERSAL::isa $_[0], "JSON::Literal"
795 root 1.43 }
796    
797     XSLoader::load "JSON::XS", $VERSION;
798    
799     package JSON::XS::Boolean;
800    
801     use overload
802     "0+" => sub { ${$_[0]} },
803     "++" => sub { $_[0] = ${$_[0]} + 1 },
804     "--" => sub { $_[0] = ${$_[0]} - 1 },
805     fallback => 1;
806 root 1.25
807 root 1.2 1;
808    
809 root 1.1 =head1 AUTHOR
810    
811     Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
812     http://home.schmorp.de/
813    
814     =cut
815