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Revision: 1.131
Committed: Thu Mar 11 19:31:37 2010 UTC (14 years, 2 months ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: rel-2_28
Changes since 1.130: +16 -4 lines
Log Message:
2.28

File Contents

# Content
1 =head1 NAME
2
3 JSON::XS - JSON serialising/deserialising, done correctly and fast
4
5 =encoding utf-8
6
7 JSON::XS - 正しくて高速な JSON シリアライザ/デシリアライザ
8 (http://fleur.hio.jp/perldoc/mix/lib/JSON/XS.html)
9
10 =head1 SYNOPSIS
11
12 use JSON::XS;
13
14 # exported functions, they croak on error
15 # and expect/generate UTF-8
16
17 $utf8_encoded_json_text = encode_json $perl_hash_or_arrayref;
18 $perl_hash_or_arrayref = decode_json $utf8_encoded_json_text;
19
20 # OO-interface
21
22 $coder = JSON::XS->new->ascii->pretty->allow_nonref;
23 $pretty_printed_unencoded = $coder->encode ($perl_scalar);
24 $perl_scalar = $coder->decode ($unicode_json_text);
25
26 # Note that JSON version 2.0 and above will automatically use JSON::XS
27 # if available, at virtually no speed overhead either, so you should
28 # be able to just:
29
30 use JSON;
31
32 # and do the same things, except that you have a pure-perl fallback now.
33
34 =head1 DESCRIPTION
35
36 This module converts Perl data structures to JSON and vice versa. Its
37 primary goal is to be I<correct> and its secondary goal is to be
38 I<fast>. To reach the latter goal it was written in C.
39
40 Beginning with version 2.0 of the JSON module, when both JSON and
41 JSON::XS are installed, then JSON will fall back on JSON::XS (this can be
42 overridden) with no overhead due to emulation (by inheriting constructor
43 and methods). If JSON::XS is not available, it will fall back to the
44 compatible JSON::PP module as backend, so using JSON instead of JSON::XS
45 gives you a portable JSON API that can be fast when you need and doesn't
46 require a C compiler when that is a problem.
47
48 As this is the n-th-something JSON module on CPAN, what was the reason
49 to write yet another JSON module? While it seems there are many JSON
50 modules, none of them correctly handle all corner cases, and in most cases
51 their maintainers are unresponsive, gone missing, or not listening to bug
52 reports for other reasons.
53
54 See MAPPING, below, on how JSON::XS maps perl values to JSON values and
55 vice versa.
56
57 =head2 FEATURES
58
59 =over 4
60
61 =item * correct Unicode handling
62
63 This module knows how to handle Unicode, documents how and when it does
64 so, and even documents what "correct" means.
65
66 =item * round-trip integrity
67
68 When you serialise a perl data structure using only data types supported
69 by JSON and Perl, the deserialised data structure is identical on the Perl
70 level. (e.g. the string "2.0" doesn't suddenly become "2" just because
71 it looks like a number). There I<are> minor exceptions to this, read the
72 MAPPING section below to learn about those.
73
74 =item * strict checking of JSON correctness
75
76 There is no guessing, no generating of illegal JSON texts by default,
77 and only JSON is accepted as input by default (the latter is a security
78 feature).
79
80 =item * fast
81
82 Compared to other JSON modules and other serialisers such as Storable,
83 this module usually compares favourably in terms of speed, too.
84
85 =item * simple to use
86
87 This module has both a simple functional interface as well as an object
88 oriented interface interface.
89
90 =item * reasonably versatile output formats
91
92 You can choose between the most compact guaranteed-single-line format
93 possible (nice for simple line-based protocols), a pure-ASCII format
94 (for when your transport is not 8-bit clean, still supports the whole
95 Unicode range), or a pretty-printed format (for when you want to read that
96 stuff). Or you can combine those features in whatever way you like.
97
98 =back
99
100 =cut
101
102 package JSON::XS;
103
104 use common::sense;
105
106 our $VERSION = '2.28';
107 our @ISA = qw(Exporter);
108
109 our @EXPORT = qw(encode_json decode_json to_json from_json);
110
111 sub to_json($) {
112 require Carp;
113 Carp::croak ("JSON::XS::to_json has been renamed to encode_json, either downgrade to pre-2.0 versions of JSON::XS or rename the call");
114 }
115
116 sub from_json($) {
117 require Carp;
118 Carp::croak ("JSON::XS::from_json has been renamed to decode_json, either downgrade to pre-2.0 versions of JSON::XS or rename the call");
119 }
120
121 use Exporter;
122 use XSLoader;
123
124 =head1 FUNCTIONAL INTERFACE
125
126 The following convenience methods are provided by this module. They are
127 exported by default:
128
129 =over 4
130
131 =item $json_text = encode_json $perl_scalar
132
133 Converts the given Perl data structure to a UTF-8 encoded, binary string
134 (that is, the string contains octets only). Croaks on error.
135
136 This function call is functionally identical to:
137
138 $json_text = JSON::XS->new->utf8->encode ($perl_scalar)
139
140 Except being faster.
141
142 =item $perl_scalar = decode_json $json_text
143
144 The opposite of C<encode_json>: expects an UTF-8 (binary) string and tries
145 to parse that as an UTF-8 encoded JSON text, returning the resulting
146 reference. Croaks on error.
147
148 This function call is functionally identical to:
149
150 $perl_scalar = JSON::XS->new->utf8->decode ($json_text)
151
152 Except being faster.
153
154 =item $is_boolean = JSON::XS::is_bool $scalar
155
156 Returns true if the passed scalar represents either JSON::XS::true or
157 JSON::XS::false, two constants that act like C<1> and C<0>, respectively
158 and are used to represent JSON C<true> and C<false> values in Perl.
159
160 See MAPPING, below, for more information on how JSON values are mapped to
161 Perl.
162
163 =back
164
165
166 =head1 A FEW NOTES ON UNICODE AND PERL
167
168 Since this often leads to confusion, here are a few very clear words on
169 how Unicode works in Perl, modulo bugs.
170
171 =over 4
172
173 =item 1. Perl strings can store characters with ordinal values > 255.
174
175 This enables you to store Unicode characters as single characters in a
176 Perl string - very natural.
177
178 =item 2. Perl does I<not> associate an encoding with your strings.
179
180 ... until you force it to, e.g. when matching it against a regex, or
181 printing the scalar to a file, in which case Perl either interprets your
182 string as locale-encoded text, octets/binary, or as Unicode, depending
183 on various settings. In no case is an encoding stored together with your
184 data, it is I<use> that decides encoding, not any magical meta data.
185
186 =item 3. The internal utf-8 flag has no meaning with regards to the
187 encoding of your string.
188
189 Just ignore that flag unless you debug a Perl bug, a module written in
190 XS or want to dive into the internals of perl. Otherwise it will only
191 confuse you, as, despite the name, it says nothing about how your string
192 is encoded. You can have Unicode strings with that flag set, with that
193 flag clear, and you can have binary data with that flag set and that flag
194 clear. Other possibilities exist, too.
195
196 If you didn't know about that flag, just the better, pretend it doesn't
197 exist.
198
199 =item 4. A "Unicode String" is simply a string where each character can be
200 validly interpreted as a Unicode code point.
201
202 If you have UTF-8 encoded data, it is no longer a Unicode string, but a
203 Unicode string encoded in UTF-8, giving you a binary string.
204
205 =item 5. A string containing "high" (> 255) character values is I<not> a UTF-8 string.
206
207 It's a fact. Learn to live with it.
208
209 =back
210
211 I hope this helps :)
212
213
214 =head1 OBJECT-ORIENTED INTERFACE
215
216 The object oriented interface lets you configure your own encoding or
217 decoding style, within the limits of supported formats.
218
219 =over 4
220
221 =item $json = new JSON::XS
222
223 Creates a new JSON::XS object that can be used to de/encode JSON
224 strings. All boolean flags described below are by default I<disabled>.
225
226 The mutators for flags all return the JSON object again and thus calls can
227 be chained:
228
229 my $json = JSON::XS->new->utf8->space_after->encode ({a => [1,2]})
230 => {"a": [1, 2]}
231
232 =item $json = $json->ascii ([$enable])
233
234 =item $enabled = $json->get_ascii
235
236 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will not
237 generate characters outside the code range C<0..127> (which is ASCII). Any
238 Unicode characters outside that range will be escaped using either a
239 single \uXXXX (BMP characters) or a double \uHHHH\uLLLLL escape sequence,
240 as per RFC4627. The resulting encoded JSON text can be treated as a native
241 Unicode string, an ascii-encoded, latin1-encoded or UTF-8 encoded string,
242 or any other superset of ASCII.
243
244 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not escape Unicode
245 characters unless required by the JSON syntax or other flags. This results
246 in a faster and more compact format.
247
248 See also the section I<ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES> later in this
249 document.
250
251 The main use for this flag is to produce JSON texts that can be
252 transmitted over a 7-bit channel, as the encoded JSON texts will not
253 contain any 8 bit characters.
254
255 JSON::XS->new->ascii (1)->encode ([chr 0x10401])
256 => ["\ud801\udc01"]
257
258 =item $json = $json->latin1 ([$enable])
259
260 =item $enabled = $json->get_latin1
261
262 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will encode
263 the resulting JSON text as latin1 (or iso-8859-1), escaping any characters
264 outside the code range C<0..255>. The resulting string can be treated as a
265 latin1-encoded JSON text or a native Unicode string. The C<decode> method
266 will not be affected in any way by this flag, as C<decode> by default
267 expects Unicode, which is a strict superset of latin1.
268
269 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not escape Unicode
270 characters unless required by the JSON syntax or other flags.
271
272 See also the section I<ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES> later in this
273 document.
274
275 The main use for this flag is efficiently encoding binary data as JSON
276 text, as most octets will not be escaped, resulting in a smaller encoded
277 size. The disadvantage is that the resulting JSON text is encoded
278 in latin1 (and must correctly be treated as such when storing and
279 transferring), a rare encoding for JSON. It is therefore most useful when
280 you want to store data structures known to contain binary data efficiently
281 in files or databases, not when talking to other JSON encoders/decoders.
282
283 JSON::XS->new->latin1->encode (["\x{89}\x{abc}"]
284 => ["\x{89}\\u0abc"] # (perl syntax, U+abc escaped, U+89 not)
285
286 =item $json = $json->utf8 ([$enable])
287
288 =item $enabled = $json->get_utf8
289
290 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will encode
291 the JSON result into UTF-8, as required by many protocols, while the
292 C<decode> method expects to be handled an UTF-8-encoded string. Please
293 note that UTF-8-encoded strings do not contain any characters outside the
294 range C<0..255>, they are thus useful for bytewise/binary I/O. In future
295 versions, enabling this option might enable autodetection of the UTF-16
296 and UTF-32 encoding families, as described in RFC4627.
297
298 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will return the JSON
299 string as a (non-encoded) Unicode string, while C<decode> expects thus a
300 Unicode string. Any decoding or encoding (e.g. to UTF-8 or UTF-16) needs
301 to be done yourself, e.g. using the Encode module.
302
303 See also the section I<ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES> later in this
304 document.
305
306 Example, output UTF-16BE-encoded JSON:
307
308 use Encode;
309 $jsontext = encode "UTF-16BE", JSON::XS->new->encode ($object);
310
311 Example, decode UTF-32LE-encoded JSON:
312
313 use Encode;
314 $object = JSON::XS->new->decode (decode "UTF-32LE", $jsontext);
315
316 =item $json = $json->pretty ([$enable])
317
318 This enables (or disables) all of the C<indent>, C<space_before> and
319 C<space_after> (and in the future possibly more) flags in one call to
320 generate the most readable (or most compact) form possible.
321
322 Example, pretty-print some simple structure:
323
324 my $json = JSON::XS->new->pretty(1)->encode ({a => [1,2]})
325 =>
326 {
327 "a" : [
328 1,
329 2
330 ]
331 }
332
333 =item $json = $json->indent ([$enable])
334
335 =item $enabled = $json->get_indent
336
337 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will use a multiline
338 format as output, putting every array member or object/hash key-value pair
339 into its own line, indenting them properly.
340
341 If C<$enable> is false, no newlines or indenting will be produced, and the
342 resulting JSON text is guaranteed not to contain any C<newlines>.
343
344 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts.
345
346 =item $json = $json->space_before ([$enable])
347
348 =item $enabled = $json->get_space_before
349
350 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will add an extra
351 optional space before the C<:> separating keys from values in JSON objects.
352
353 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not add any extra
354 space at those places.
355
356 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts. You will also
357 most likely combine this setting with C<space_after>.
358
359 Example, space_before enabled, space_after and indent disabled:
360
361 {"key" :"value"}
362
363 =item $json = $json->space_after ([$enable])
364
365 =item $enabled = $json->get_space_after
366
367 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will add an extra
368 optional space after the C<:> separating keys from values in JSON objects
369 and extra whitespace after the C<,> separating key-value pairs and array
370 members.
371
372 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not add any extra
373 space at those places.
374
375 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts.
376
377 Example, space_before and indent disabled, space_after enabled:
378
379 {"key": "value"}
380
381 =item $json = $json->relaxed ([$enable])
382
383 =item $enabled = $json->get_relaxed
384
385 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then C<decode> will accept some
386 extensions to normal JSON syntax (see below). C<encode> will not be
387 affected in anyway. I<Be aware that this option makes you accept invalid
388 JSON texts as if they were valid!>. I suggest only to use this option to
389 parse application-specific files written by humans (configuration files,
390 resource files etc.)
391
392 If C<$enable> is false (the default), then C<decode> will only accept
393 valid JSON texts.
394
395 Currently accepted extensions are:
396
397 =over 4
398
399 =item * list items can have an end-comma
400
401 JSON I<separates> array elements and key-value pairs with commas. This
402 can be annoying if you write JSON texts manually and want to be able to
403 quickly append elements, so this extension accepts comma at the end of
404 such items not just between them:
405
406 [
407 1,
408 2, <- this comma not normally allowed
409 ]
410 {
411 "k1": "v1",
412 "k2": "v2", <- this comma not normally allowed
413 }
414
415 =item * shell-style '#'-comments
416
417 Whenever JSON allows whitespace, shell-style comments are additionally
418 allowed. They are terminated by the first carriage-return or line-feed
419 character, after which more white-space and comments are allowed.
420
421 [
422 1, # this comment not allowed in JSON
423 # neither this one...
424 ]
425
426 =back
427
428 =item $json = $json->canonical ([$enable])
429
430 =item $enabled = $json->get_canonical
431
432 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will output JSON objects
433 by sorting their keys. This is adding a comparatively high overhead.
434
435 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will output key-value
436 pairs in the order Perl stores them (which will likely change between runs
437 of the same script).
438
439 This option is useful if you want the same data structure to be encoded as
440 the same JSON text (given the same overall settings). If it is disabled,
441 the same hash might be encoded differently even if contains the same data,
442 as key-value pairs have no inherent ordering in Perl.
443
444 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts.
445
446 This setting has currently no effect on tied hashes.
447
448 =item $json = $json->allow_nonref ([$enable])
449
450 =item $enabled = $json->get_allow_nonref
451
452 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method can convert a
453 non-reference into its corresponding string, number or null JSON value,
454 which is an extension to RFC4627. Likewise, C<decode> will accept those JSON
455 values instead of croaking.
456
457 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will croak if it isn't
458 passed an arrayref or hashref, as JSON texts must either be an object
459 or array. Likewise, C<decode> will croak if given something that is not a
460 JSON object or array.
461
462 Example, encode a Perl scalar as JSON value with enabled C<allow_nonref>,
463 resulting in an invalid JSON text:
464
465 JSON::XS->new->allow_nonref->encode ("Hello, World!")
466 => "Hello, World!"
467
468 =item $json = $json->allow_unknown ([$enable])
469
470 =item $enabled = $json->get_allow_unknown
471
472 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then C<encode> will I<not> throw an
473 exception when it encounters values it cannot represent in JSON (for
474 example, filehandles) but instead will encode a JSON C<null> value. Note
475 that blessed objects are not included here and are handled separately by
476 c<allow_nonref>.
477
478 If C<$enable> is false (the default), then C<encode> will throw an
479 exception when it encounters anything it cannot encode as JSON.
480
481 This option does not affect C<decode> in any way, and it is recommended to
482 leave it off unless you know your communications partner.
483
484 =item $json = $json->allow_blessed ([$enable])
485
486 =item $enabled = $json->get_allow_blessed
487
488 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will not
489 barf when it encounters a blessed reference. Instead, the value of the
490 B<convert_blessed> option will decide whether C<null> (C<convert_blessed>
491 disabled or no C<TO_JSON> method found) or a representation of the
492 object (C<convert_blessed> enabled and C<TO_JSON> method found) is being
493 encoded. Has no effect on C<decode>.
494
495 If C<$enable> is false (the default), then C<encode> will throw an
496 exception when it encounters a blessed object.
497
498 =item $json = $json->convert_blessed ([$enable])
499
500 =item $enabled = $json->get_convert_blessed
501
502 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then C<encode>, upon encountering a
503 blessed object, will check for the availability of the C<TO_JSON> method
504 on the object's class. If found, it will be called in scalar context
505 and the resulting scalar will be encoded instead of the object. If no
506 C<TO_JSON> method is found, the value of C<allow_blessed> will decide what
507 to do.
508
509 The C<TO_JSON> method may safely call die if it wants. If C<TO_JSON>
510 returns other blessed objects, those will be handled in the same
511 way. C<TO_JSON> must take care of not causing an endless recursion cycle
512 (== crash) in this case. The name of C<TO_JSON> was chosen because other
513 methods called by the Perl core (== not by the user of the object) are
514 usually in upper case letters and to avoid collisions with any C<to_json>
515 function or method.
516
517 This setting does not yet influence C<decode> in any way, but in the
518 future, global hooks might get installed that influence C<decode> and are
519 enabled by this setting.
520
521 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<allow_blessed> setting will decide what
522 to do when a blessed object is found.
523
524 =item $json = $json->filter_json_object ([$coderef->($hashref)])
525
526 When C<$coderef> is specified, it will be called from C<decode> each
527 time it decodes a JSON object. The only argument is a reference to the
528 newly-created hash. If the code references returns a single scalar (which
529 need not be a reference), this value (i.e. a copy of that scalar to avoid
530 aliasing) is inserted into the deserialised data structure. If it returns
531 an empty list (NOTE: I<not> C<undef>, which is a valid scalar), the
532 original deserialised hash will be inserted. This setting can slow down
533 decoding considerably.
534
535 When C<$coderef> is omitted or undefined, any existing callback will
536 be removed and C<decode> will not change the deserialised hash in any
537 way.
538
539 Example, convert all JSON objects into the integer 5:
540
541 my $js = JSON::XS->new->filter_json_object (sub { 5 });
542 # returns [5]
543 $js->decode ('[{}]')
544 # throw an exception because allow_nonref is not enabled
545 # so a lone 5 is not allowed.
546 $js->decode ('{"a":1, "b":2}');
547
548 =item $json = $json->filter_json_single_key_object ($key [=> $coderef->($value)])
549
550 Works remotely similar to C<filter_json_object>, but is only called for
551 JSON objects having a single key named C<$key>.
552
553 This C<$coderef> is called before the one specified via
554 C<filter_json_object>, if any. It gets passed the single value in the JSON
555 object. If it returns a single value, it will be inserted into the data
556 structure. If it returns nothing (not even C<undef> but the empty list),
557 the callback from C<filter_json_object> will be called next, as if no
558 single-key callback were specified.
559
560 If C<$coderef> is omitted or undefined, the corresponding callback will be
561 disabled. There can only ever be one callback for a given key.
562
563 As this callback gets called less often then the C<filter_json_object>
564 one, decoding speed will not usually suffer as much. Therefore, single-key
565 objects make excellent targets to serialise Perl objects into, especially
566 as single-key JSON objects are as close to the type-tagged value concept
567 as JSON gets (it's basically an ID/VALUE tuple). Of course, JSON does not
568 support this in any way, so you need to make sure your data never looks
569 like a serialised Perl hash.
570
571 Typical names for the single object key are C<__class_whatever__>, or
572 C<$__dollars_are_rarely_used__$> or C<}ugly_brace_placement>, or even
573 things like C<__class_md5sum(classname)__>, to reduce the risk of clashing
574 with real hashes.
575
576 Example, decode JSON objects of the form C<< { "__widget__" => <id> } >>
577 into the corresponding C<< $WIDGET{<id>} >> object:
578
579 # return whatever is in $WIDGET{5}:
580 JSON::XS
581 ->new
582 ->filter_json_single_key_object (__widget__ => sub {
583 $WIDGET{ $_[0] }
584 })
585 ->decode ('{"__widget__": 5')
586
587 # this can be used with a TO_JSON method in some "widget" class
588 # for serialisation to json:
589 sub WidgetBase::TO_JSON {
590 my ($self) = @_;
591
592 unless ($self->{id}) {
593 $self->{id} = ..get..some..id..;
594 $WIDGET{$self->{id}} = $self;
595 }
596
597 { __widget__ => $self->{id} }
598 }
599
600 =item $json = $json->shrink ([$enable])
601
602 =item $enabled = $json->get_shrink
603
604 Perl usually over-allocates memory a bit when allocating space for
605 strings. This flag optionally resizes strings generated by either
606 C<encode> or C<decode> to their minimum size possible. This can save
607 memory when your JSON texts are either very very long or you have many
608 short strings. It will also try to downgrade any strings to octet-form
609 if possible: perl stores strings internally either in an encoding called
610 UTF-X or in octet-form. The latter cannot store everything but uses less
611 space in general (and some buggy Perl or C code might even rely on that
612 internal representation being used).
613
614 The actual definition of what shrink does might change in future versions,
615 but it will always try to save space at the expense of time.
616
617 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), the string returned by C<encode> will
618 be shrunk-to-fit, while all strings generated by C<decode> will also be
619 shrunk-to-fit.
620
621 If C<$enable> is false, then the normal perl allocation algorithms are used.
622 If you work with your data, then this is likely to be faster.
623
624 In the future, this setting might control other things, such as converting
625 strings that look like integers or floats into integers or floats
626 internally (there is no difference on the Perl level), saving space.
627
628 =item $json = $json->max_depth ([$maximum_nesting_depth])
629
630 =item $max_depth = $json->get_max_depth
631
632 Sets the maximum nesting level (default C<512>) accepted while encoding
633 or decoding. If a higher nesting level is detected in JSON text or a Perl
634 data structure, then the encoder and decoder will stop and croak at that
635 point.
636
637 Nesting level is defined by number of hash- or arrayrefs that the encoder
638 needs to traverse to reach a given point or the number of C<{> or C<[>
639 characters without their matching closing parenthesis crossed to reach a
640 given character in a string.
641
642 Setting the maximum depth to one disallows any nesting, so that ensures
643 that the object is only a single hash/object or array.
644
645 If no argument is given, the highest possible setting will be used, which
646 is rarely useful.
647
648 Note that nesting is implemented by recursion in C. The default value has
649 been chosen to be as large as typical operating systems allow without
650 crashing.
651
652 See SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS, below, for more info on why this is useful.
653
654 =item $json = $json->max_size ([$maximum_string_size])
655
656 =item $max_size = $json->get_max_size
657
658 Set the maximum length a JSON text may have (in bytes) where decoding is
659 being attempted. The default is C<0>, meaning no limit. When C<decode>
660 is called on a string that is longer then this many bytes, it will not
661 attempt to decode the string but throw an exception. This setting has no
662 effect on C<encode> (yet).
663
664 If no argument is given, the limit check will be deactivated (same as when
665 C<0> is specified).
666
667 See SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS, below, for more info on why this is useful.
668
669 =item $json_text = $json->encode ($perl_scalar)
670
671 Converts the given Perl data structure (a simple scalar or a reference
672 to a hash or array) to its JSON representation. Simple scalars will be
673 converted into JSON string or number sequences, while references to arrays
674 become JSON arrays and references to hashes become JSON objects. Undefined
675 Perl values (e.g. C<undef>) become JSON C<null> values. Neither C<true>
676 nor C<false> values will be generated.
677
678 =item $perl_scalar = $json->decode ($json_text)
679
680 The opposite of C<encode>: expects a JSON text and tries to parse it,
681 returning the resulting simple scalar or reference. Croaks on error.
682
683 JSON numbers and strings become simple Perl scalars. JSON arrays become
684 Perl arrayrefs and JSON objects become Perl hashrefs. C<true> becomes
685 C<1>, C<false> becomes C<0> and C<null> becomes C<undef>.
686
687 =item ($perl_scalar, $characters) = $json->decode_prefix ($json_text)
688
689 This works like the C<decode> method, but instead of raising an exception
690 when there is trailing garbage after the first JSON object, it will
691 silently stop parsing there and return the number of characters consumed
692 so far.
693
694 This is useful if your JSON texts are not delimited by an outer protocol
695 (which is not the brightest thing to do in the first place) and you need
696 to know where the JSON text ends.
697
698 JSON::XS->new->decode_prefix ("[1] the tail")
699 => ([], 3)
700
701 =back
702
703
704 =head1 INCREMENTAL PARSING
705
706 In some cases, there is the need for incremental parsing of JSON
707 texts. While this module always has to keep both JSON text and resulting
708 Perl data structure in memory at one time, it does allow you to parse a
709 JSON stream incrementally. It does so by accumulating text until it has
710 a full JSON object, which it then can decode. This process is similar to
711 using C<decode_prefix> to see if a full JSON object is available, but
712 is much more efficient (and can be implemented with a minimum of method
713 calls).
714
715 JSON::XS will only attempt to parse the JSON text once it is sure it
716 has enough text to get a decisive result, using a very simple but
717 truly incremental parser. This means that it sometimes won't stop as
718 early as the full parser, for example, it doesn't detect parenthese
719 mismatches. The only thing it guarantees is that it starts decoding as
720 soon as a syntactically valid JSON text has been seen. This means you need
721 to set resource limits (e.g. C<max_size>) to ensure the parser will stop
722 parsing in the presence if syntax errors.
723
724 The following methods implement this incremental parser.
725
726 =over 4
727
728 =item [void, scalar or list context] = $json->incr_parse ([$string])
729
730 This is the central parsing function. It can both append new text and
731 extract objects from the stream accumulated so far (both of these
732 functions are optional).
733
734 If C<$string> is given, then this string is appended to the already
735 existing JSON fragment stored in the C<$json> object.
736
737 After that, if the function is called in void context, it will simply
738 return without doing anything further. This can be used to add more text
739 in as many chunks as you want.
740
741 If the method is called in scalar context, then it will try to extract
742 exactly I<one> JSON object. If that is successful, it will return this
743 object, otherwise it will return C<undef>. If there is a parse error,
744 this method will croak just as C<decode> would do (one can then use
745 C<incr_skip> to skip the errornous part). This is the most common way of
746 using the method.
747
748 And finally, in list context, it will try to extract as many objects
749 from the stream as it can find and return them, or the empty list
750 otherwise. For this to work, there must be no separators between the JSON
751 objects or arrays, instead they must be concatenated back-to-back. If
752 an error occurs, an exception will be raised as in the scalar context
753 case. Note that in this case, any previously-parsed JSON texts will be
754 lost.
755
756 Example: Parse some JSON arrays/objects in a given string and return
757 them.
758
759 my @objs = JSON::XS->new->incr_parse ("[5][7][1,2]");
760
761 =item $lvalue_string = $json->incr_text
762
763 This method returns the currently stored JSON fragment as an lvalue, that
764 is, you can manipulate it. This I<only> works when a preceding call to
765 C<incr_parse> in I<scalar context> successfully returned an object. Under
766 all other circumstances you must not call this function (I mean it.
767 although in simple tests it might actually work, it I<will> fail under
768 real world conditions). As a special exception, you can also call this
769 method before having parsed anything.
770
771 This function is useful in two cases: a) finding the trailing text after a
772 JSON object or b) parsing multiple JSON objects separated by non-JSON text
773 (such as commas).
774
775 =item $json->incr_skip
776
777 This will reset the state of the incremental parser and will remove
778 the parsed text from the input buffer so far. This is useful after
779 C<incr_parse> died, in which case the input buffer and incremental parser
780 state is left unchanged, to skip the text parsed so far and to reset the
781 parse state.
782
783 The difference to C<incr_reset> is that only text until the parse error
784 occured is removed.
785
786 =item $json->incr_reset
787
788 This completely resets the incremental parser, that is, after this call,
789 it will be as if the parser had never parsed anything.
790
791 This is useful if you want to repeatedly parse JSON objects and want to
792 ignore any trailing data, which means you have to reset the parser after
793 each successful decode.
794
795 =back
796
797 =head2 LIMITATIONS
798
799 All options that affect decoding are supported, except
800 C<allow_nonref>. The reason for this is that it cannot be made to
801 work sensibly: JSON objects and arrays are self-delimited, i.e. you can concatenate
802 them back to back and still decode them perfectly. This does not hold true
803 for JSON numbers, however.
804
805 For example, is the string C<1> a single JSON number, or is it simply the
806 start of C<12>? Or is C<12> a single JSON number, or the concatenation
807 of C<1> and C<2>? In neither case you can tell, and this is why JSON::XS
808 takes the conservative route and disallows this case.
809
810 =head2 EXAMPLES
811
812 Some examples will make all this clearer. First, a simple example that
813 works similarly to C<decode_prefix>: We want to decode the JSON object at
814 the start of a string and identify the portion after the JSON object:
815
816 my $text = "[1,2,3] hello";
817
818 my $json = new JSON::XS;
819
820 my $obj = $json->incr_parse ($text)
821 or die "expected JSON object or array at beginning of string";
822
823 my $tail = $json->incr_text;
824 # $tail now contains " hello"
825
826 Easy, isn't it?
827
828 Now for a more complicated example: Imagine a hypothetical protocol where
829 you read some requests from a TCP stream, and each request is a JSON
830 array, without any separation between them (in fact, it is often useful to
831 use newlines as "separators", as these get interpreted as whitespace at
832 the start of the JSON text, which makes it possible to test said protocol
833 with C<telnet>...).
834
835 Here is how you'd do it (it is trivial to write this in an event-based
836 manner):
837
838 my $json = new JSON::XS;
839
840 # read some data from the socket
841 while (sysread $socket, my $buf, 4096) {
842
843 # split and decode as many requests as possible
844 for my $request ($json->incr_parse ($buf)) {
845 # act on the $request
846 }
847 }
848
849 Another complicated example: Assume you have a string with JSON objects
850 or arrays, all separated by (optional) comma characters (e.g. C<[1],[2],
851 [3]>). To parse them, we have to skip the commas between the JSON texts,
852 and here is where the lvalue-ness of C<incr_text> comes in useful:
853
854 my $text = "[1],[2], [3]";
855 my $json = new JSON::XS;
856
857 # void context, so no parsing done
858 $json->incr_parse ($text);
859
860 # now extract as many objects as possible. note the
861 # use of scalar context so incr_text can be called.
862 while (my $obj = $json->incr_parse) {
863 # do something with $obj
864
865 # now skip the optional comma
866 $json->incr_text =~ s/^ \s* , //x;
867 }
868
869 Now lets go for a very complex example: Assume that you have a gigantic
870 JSON array-of-objects, many gigabytes in size, and you want to parse it,
871 but you cannot load it into memory fully (this has actually happened in
872 the real world :).
873
874 Well, you lost, you have to implement your own JSON parser. But JSON::XS
875 can still help you: You implement a (very simple) array parser and let
876 JSON decode the array elements, which are all full JSON objects on their
877 own (this wouldn't work if the array elements could be JSON numbers, for
878 example):
879
880 my $json = new JSON::XS;
881
882 # open the monster
883 open my $fh, "<bigfile.json"
884 or die "bigfile: $!";
885
886 # first parse the initial "["
887 for (;;) {
888 sysread $fh, my $buf, 65536
889 or die "read error: $!";
890 $json->incr_parse ($buf); # void context, so no parsing
891
892 # Exit the loop once we found and removed(!) the initial "[".
893 # In essence, we are (ab-)using the $json object as a simple scalar
894 # we append data to.
895 last if $json->incr_text =~ s/^ \s* \[ //x;
896 }
897
898 # now we have the skipped the initial "[", so continue
899 # parsing all the elements.
900 for (;;) {
901 # in this loop we read data until we got a single JSON object
902 for (;;) {
903 if (my $obj = $json->incr_parse) {
904 # do something with $obj
905 last;
906 }
907
908 # add more data
909 sysread $fh, my $buf, 65536
910 or die "read error: $!";
911 $json->incr_parse ($buf); # void context, so no parsing
912 }
913
914 # in this loop we read data until we either found and parsed the
915 # separating "," between elements, or the final "]"
916 for (;;) {
917 # first skip whitespace
918 $json->incr_text =~ s/^\s*//;
919
920 # if we find "]", we are done
921 if ($json->incr_text =~ s/^\]//) {
922 print "finished.\n";
923 exit;
924 }
925
926 # if we find ",", we can continue with the next element
927 if ($json->incr_text =~ s/^,//) {
928 last;
929 }
930
931 # if we find anything else, we have a parse error!
932 if (length $json->incr_text) {
933 die "parse error near ", $json->incr_text;
934 }
935
936 # else add more data
937 sysread $fh, my $buf, 65536
938 or die "read error: $!";
939 $json->incr_parse ($buf); # void context, so no parsing
940 }
941
942 This is a complex example, but most of the complexity comes from the fact
943 that we are trying to be correct (bear with me if I am wrong, I never ran
944 the above example :).
945
946
947
948 =head1 MAPPING
949
950 This section describes how JSON::XS maps Perl values to JSON values and
951 vice versa. These mappings are designed to "do the right thing" in most
952 circumstances automatically, preserving round-tripping characteristics
953 (what you put in comes out as something equivalent).
954
955 For the more enlightened: note that in the following descriptions,
956 lowercase I<perl> refers to the Perl interpreter, while uppercase I<Perl>
957 refers to the abstract Perl language itself.
958
959
960 =head2 JSON -> PERL
961
962 =over 4
963
964 =item object
965
966 A JSON object becomes a reference to a hash in Perl. No ordering of object
967 keys is preserved (JSON does not preserve object key ordering itself).
968
969 =item array
970
971 A JSON array becomes a reference to an array in Perl.
972
973 =item string
974
975 A JSON string becomes a string scalar in Perl - Unicode codepoints in JSON
976 are represented by the same codepoints in the Perl string, so no manual
977 decoding is necessary.
978
979 =item number
980
981 A JSON number becomes either an integer, numeric (floating point) or
982 string scalar in perl, depending on its range and any fractional parts. On
983 the Perl level, there is no difference between those as Perl handles all
984 the conversion details, but an integer may take slightly less memory and
985 might represent more values exactly than floating point numbers.
986
987 If the number consists of digits only, JSON::XS will try to represent
988 it as an integer value. If that fails, it will try to represent it as
989 a numeric (floating point) value if that is possible without loss of
990 precision. Otherwise it will preserve the number as a string value (in
991 which case you lose roundtripping ability, as the JSON number will be
992 re-encoded toa JSON string).
993
994 Numbers containing a fractional or exponential part will always be
995 represented as numeric (floating point) values, possibly at a loss of
996 precision (in which case you might lose perfect roundtripping ability, but
997 the JSON number will still be re-encoded as a JSON number).
998
999 Note that precision is not accuracy - binary floating point values cannot
1000 represent most decimal fractions exactly, and when converting from and to
1001 floating point, JSON::XS only guarantees precision up to but not including
1002 the leats significant bit.
1003
1004 =item true, false
1005
1006 These JSON atoms become C<JSON::XS::true> and C<JSON::XS::false>,
1007 respectively. They are overloaded to act almost exactly like the numbers
1008 C<1> and C<0>. You can check whether a scalar is a JSON boolean by using
1009 the C<JSON::XS::is_bool> function.
1010
1011 =item null
1012
1013 A JSON null atom becomes C<undef> in Perl.
1014
1015 =back
1016
1017
1018 =head2 PERL -> JSON
1019
1020 The mapping from Perl to JSON is slightly more difficult, as Perl is a
1021 truly typeless language, so we can only guess which JSON type is meant by
1022 a Perl value.
1023
1024 =over 4
1025
1026 =item hash references
1027
1028 Perl hash references become JSON objects. As there is no inherent ordering
1029 in hash keys (or JSON objects), they will usually be encoded in a
1030 pseudo-random order that can change between runs of the same program but
1031 stays generally the same within a single run of a program. JSON::XS can
1032 optionally sort the hash keys (determined by the I<canonical> flag), so
1033 the same datastructure will serialise to the same JSON text (given same
1034 settings and version of JSON::XS), but this incurs a runtime overhead
1035 and is only rarely useful, e.g. when you want to compare some JSON text
1036 against another for equality.
1037
1038 =item array references
1039
1040 Perl array references become JSON arrays.
1041
1042 =item other references
1043
1044 Other unblessed references are generally not allowed and will cause an
1045 exception to be thrown, except for references to the integers C<0> and
1046 C<1>, which get turned into C<false> and C<true> atoms in JSON. You can
1047 also use C<JSON::XS::false> and C<JSON::XS::true> to improve readability.
1048
1049 encode_json [\0, JSON::XS::true] # yields [false,true]
1050
1051 =item JSON::XS::true, JSON::XS::false
1052
1053 These special values become JSON true and JSON false values,
1054 respectively. You can also use C<\1> and C<\0> directly if you want.
1055
1056 =item blessed objects
1057
1058 Blessed objects are not directly representable in JSON. See the
1059 C<allow_blessed> and C<convert_blessed> methods on various options on
1060 how to deal with this: basically, you can choose between throwing an
1061 exception, encoding the reference as if it weren't blessed, or provide
1062 your own serialiser method.
1063
1064 =item simple scalars
1065
1066 Simple Perl scalars (any scalar that is not a reference) are the most
1067 difficult objects to encode: JSON::XS will encode undefined scalars as
1068 JSON C<null> values, scalars that have last been used in a string context
1069 before encoding as JSON strings, and anything else as number value:
1070
1071 # dump as number
1072 encode_json [2] # yields [2]
1073 encode_json [-3.0e17] # yields [-3e+17]
1074 my $value = 5; encode_json [$value] # yields [5]
1075
1076 # used as string, so dump as string
1077 print $value;
1078 encode_json [$value] # yields ["5"]
1079
1080 # undef becomes null
1081 encode_json [undef] # yields [null]
1082
1083 You can force the type to be a JSON string by stringifying it:
1084
1085 my $x = 3.1; # some variable containing a number
1086 "$x"; # stringified
1087 $x .= ""; # another, more awkward way to stringify
1088 print $x; # perl does it for you, too, quite often
1089
1090 You can force the type to be a JSON number by numifying it:
1091
1092 my $x = "3"; # some variable containing a string
1093 $x += 0; # numify it, ensuring it will be dumped as a number
1094 $x *= 1; # same thing, the choice is yours.
1095
1096 You can not currently force the type in other, less obscure, ways. Tell me
1097 if you need this capability (but don't forget to explain why it's needed
1098 :).
1099
1100 Note that numerical precision has the same meaning as under Perl (so
1101 binary to decimal conversion follows the same rules as in Perl, which
1102 can differ to other languages). Also, your perl interpreter might expose
1103 extensions to the floating point numbers of your platform, such as
1104 infinities or NaN's - these cannot be represented in JSON, and it is an
1105 error to pass those in.
1106
1107 =back
1108
1109
1110 =head1 ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES
1111
1112 The interested reader might have seen a number of flags that signify
1113 encodings or codesets - C<utf8>, C<latin1> and C<ascii>. There seems to be
1114 some confusion on what these do, so here is a short comparison:
1115
1116 C<utf8> controls whether the JSON text created by C<encode> (and expected
1117 by C<decode>) is UTF-8 encoded or not, while C<latin1> and C<ascii> only
1118 control whether C<encode> escapes character values outside their respective
1119 codeset range. Neither of these flags conflict with each other, although
1120 some combinations make less sense than others.
1121
1122 Care has been taken to make all flags symmetrical with respect to
1123 C<encode> and C<decode>, that is, texts encoded with any combination of
1124 these flag values will be correctly decoded when the same flags are used
1125 - in general, if you use different flag settings while encoding vs. when
1126 decoding you likely have a bug somewhere.
1127
1128 Below comes a verbose discussion of these flags. Note that a "codeset" is
1129 simply an abstract set of character-codepoint pairs, while an encoding
1130 takes those codepoint numbers and I<encodes> them, in our case into
1131 octets. Unicode is (among other things) a codeset, UTF-8 is an encoding,
1132 and ISO-8859-1 (= latin 1) and ASCII are both codesets I<and> encodings at
1133 the same time, which can be confusing.
1134
1135 =over 4
1136
1137 =item C<utf8> flag disabled
1138
1139 When C<utf8> is disabled (the default), then C<encode>/C<decode> generate
1140 and expect Unicode strings, that is, characters with high ordinal Unicode
1141 values (> 255) will be encoded as such characters, and likewise such
1142 characters are decoded as-is, no canges to them will be done, except
1143 "(re-)interpreting" them as Unicode codepoints or Unicode characters,
1144 respectively (to Perl, these are the same thing in strings unless you do
1145 funny/weird/dumb stuff).
1146
1147 This is useful when you want to do the encoding yourself (e.g. when you
1148 want to have UTF-16 encoded JSON texts) or when some other layer does
1149 the encoding for you (for example, when printing to a terminal using a
1150 filehandle that transparently encodes to UTF-8 you certainly do NOT want
1151 to UTF-8 encode your data first and have Perl encode it another time).
1152
1153 =item C<utf8> flag enabled
1154
1155 If the C<utf8>-flag is enabled, C<encode>/C<decode> will encode all
1156 characters using the corresponding UTF-8 multi-byte sequence, and will
1157 expect your input strings to be encoded as UTF-8, that is, no "character"
1158 of the input string must have any value > 255, as UTF-8 does not allow
1159 that.
1160
1161 The C<utf8> flag therefore switches between two modes: disabled means you
1162 will get a Unicode string in Perl, enabled means you get an UTF-8 encoded
1163 octet/binary string in Perl.
1164
1165 =item C<latin1> or C<ascii> flags enabled
1166
1167 With C<latin1> (or C<ascii>) enabled, C<encode> will escape characters
1168 with ordinal values > 255 (> 127 with C<ascii>) and encode the remaining
1169 characters as specified by the C<utf8> flag.
1170
1171 If C<utf8> is disabled, then the result is also correctly encoded in those
1172 character sets (as both are proper subsets of Unicode, meaning that a
1173 Unicode string with all character values < 256 is the same thing as a
1174 ISO-8859-1 string, and a Unicode string with all character values < 128 is
1175 the same thing as an ASCII string in Perl).
1176
1177 If C<utf8> is enabled, you still get a correct UTF-8-encoded string,
1178 regardless of these flags, just some more characters will be escaped using
1179 C<\uXXXX> then before.
1180
1181 Note that ISO-8859-1-I<encoded> strings are not compatible with UTF-8
1182 encoding, while ASCII-encoded strings are. That is because the ISO-8859-1
1183 encoding is NOT a subset of UTF-8 (despite the ISO-8859-1 I<codeset> being
1184 a subset of Unicode), while ASCII is.
1185
1186 Surprisingly, C<decode> will ignore these flags and so treat all input
1187 values as governed by the C<utf8> flag. If it is disabled, this allows you
1188 to decode ISO-8859-1- and ASCII-encoded strings, as both strict subsets of
1189 Unicode. If it is enabled, you can correctly decode UTF-8 encoded strings.
1190
1191 So neither C<latin1> nor C<ascii> are incompatible with the C<utf8> flag -
1192 they only govern when the JSON output engine escapes a character or not.
1193
1194 The main use for C<latin1> is to relatively efficiently store binary data
1195 as JSON, at the expense of breaking compatibility with most JSON decoders.
1196
1197 The main use for C<ascii> is to force the output to not contain characters
1198 with values > 127, which means you can interpret the resulting string
1199 as UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, ASCII, KOI8-R or most about any character set and
1200 8-bit-encoding, and still get the same data structure back. This is useful
1201 when your channel for JSON transfer is not 8-bit clean or the encoding
1202 might be mangled in between (e.g. in mail), and works because ASCII is a
1203 proper subset of most 8-bit and multibyte encodings in use in the world.
1204
1205 =back
1206
1207
1208 =head2 JSON and ECMAscript
1209
1210 JSON syntax is based on how literals are represented in javascript (the
1211 not-standardised predecessor of ECMAscript) which is presumably why it is
1212 called "JavaScript Object Notation".
1213
1214 However, JSON is not a subset (and also not a superset of course) of
1215 ECMAscript (the standard) or javascript (whatever browsers actually
1216 implement).
1217
1218 If you want to use javascript's C<eval> function to "parse" JSON, you
1219 might run into parse errors for valid JSON texts, or the resulting data
1220 structure might not be queryable:
1221
1222 One of the problems is that U+2028 and U+2029 are valid characters inside
1223 JSON strings, but are not allowed in ECMAscript string literals, so the
1224 following Perl fragment will not output something that can be guaranteed
1225 to be parsable by javascript's C<eval>:
1226
1227 use JSON::XS;
1228
1229 print encode_json [chr 0x2028];
1230
1231 The right fix for this is to use a proper JSON parser in your javascript
1232 programs, and not rely on C<eval> (see for example Douglas Crockford's
1233 F<json2.js> parser).
1234
1235 If this is not an option, you can, as a stop-gap measure, simply encode to
1236 ASCII-only JSON:
1237
1238 use JSON::XS;
1239
1240 print JSON::XS->new->ascii->encode ([chr 0x2028]);
1241
1242 Note that this will enlarge the resulting JSON text quite a bit if you
1243 have many non-ASCII characters. You might be tempted to run some regexes
1244 to only escape U+2028 and U+2029, e.g.:
1245
1246 # DO NOT USE THIS!
1247 my $json = JSON::XS->new->utf8->encode ([chr 0x2028]);
1248 $json =~ s/\xe2\x80\xa8/\\u2028/g; # escape U+2028
1249 $json =~ s/\xe2\x80\xa9/\\u2029/g; # escape U+2029
1250 print $json;
1251
1252 Note that I<this is a bad idea>: the above only works for U+2028 and
1253 U+2029 and thus only for fully ECMAscript-compliant parsers. Many existing
1254 javascript implementations, however, have issues with other characters as
1255 well - using C<eval> naively simply I<will> cause problems.
1256
1257 Another problem is that some javascript implementations reserve
1258 some property names for their own purposes (which probably makes
1259 them non-ECMAscript-compliant). For example, Iceweasel reserves the
1260 C<__proto__> property name for it's own purposes.
1261
1262 If that is a problem, you could parse try to filter the resulting JSON
1263 output for these property strings, e.g.:
1264
1265 $json =~ s/"__proto__"\s*:/"__proto__renamed":/g;
1266
1267 This works because C<__proto__> is not valid outside of strings, so every
1268 occurence of C<"__proto__"\s*:> must be a string used as property name.
1269
1270 If you know of other incompatibilities, please let me know.
1271
1272
1273 =head2 JSON and YAML
1274
1275 You often hear that JSON is a subset of YAML. This is, however, a mass
1276 hysteria(*) and very far from the truth (as of the time of this writing),
1277 so let me state it clearly: I<in general, there is no way to configure
1278 JSON::XS to output a data structure as valid YAML> that works in all
1279 cases.
1280
1281 If you really must use JSON::XS to generate YAML, you should use this
1282 algorithm (subject to change in future versions):
1283
1284 my $to_yaml = JSON::XS->new->utf8->space_after (1);
1285 my $yaml = $to_yaml->encode ($ref) . "\n";
1286
1287 This will I<usually> generate JSON texts that also parse as valid
1288 YAML. Please note that YAML has hardcoded limits on (simple) object key
1289 lengths that JSON doesn't have and also has different and incompatible
1290 unicode character escape syntax, so you should make sure that your hash
1291 keys are noticeably shorter than the 1024 "stream characters" YAML allows
1292 and that you do not have characters with codepoint values outside the
1293 Unicode BMP (basic multilingual page). YAML also does not allow C<\/>
1294 sequences in strings (which JSON::XS does not I<currently> generate, but
1295 other JSON generators might).
1296
1297 There might be other incompatibilities that I am not aware of (or the YAML
1298 specification has been changed yet again - it does so quite often). In
1299 general you should not try to generate YAML with a JSON generator or vice
1300 versa, or try to parse JSON with a YAML parser or vice versa: chances are
1301 high that you will run into severe interoperability problems when you
1302 least expect it.
1303
1304 =over 4
1305
1306 =item (*)
1307
1308 I have been pressured multiple times by Brian Ingerson (one of the
1309 authors of the YAML specification) to remove this paragraph, despite him
1310 acknowledging that the actual incompatibilities exist. As I was personally
1311 bitten by this "JSON is YAML" lie, I refused and said I will continue to
1312 educate people about these issues, so others do not run into the same
1313 problem again and again. After this, Brian called me a (quote)I<complete
1314 and worthless idiot>(unquote).
1315
1316 In my opinion, instead of pressuring and insulting people who actually
1317 clarify issues with YAML and the wrong statements of some of its
1318 proponents, I would kindly suggest reading the JSON spec (which is not
1319 that difficult or long) and finally make YAML compatible to it, and
1320 educating users about the changes, instead of spreading lies about the
1321 real compatibility for many I<years> and trying to silence people who
1322 point out that it isn't true.
1323
1324 Addendum/2009: the YAML 1.2 spec is still incomaptible with JSON, even
1325 though the incompatibilities have been documented (and are known to
1326 Brian) for many years and the spec makes explicit claims that YAML is a
1327 superset of JSON. It would be so easy to fix, but apparently, bullying and
1328 corrupting userdata is so much easier.
1329
1330 =back
1331
1332
1333 =head2 SPEED
1334
1335 It seems that JSON::XS is surprisingly fast, as shown in the following
1336 tables. They have been generated with the help of the C<eg/bench> program
1337 in the JSON::XS distribution, to make it easy to compare on your own
1338 system.
1339
1340 First comes a comparison between various modules using
1341 a very short single-line JSON string (also available at
1342 L<http://dist.schmorp.de/misc/json/short.json>).
1343
1344 {"method": "handleMessage", "params": ["user1",
1345 "we were just talking"], "id": null, "array":[1,11,234,-5,1e5,1e7,
1346 1, 0]}
1347
1348 It shows the number of encodes/decodes per second (JSON::XS uses
1349 the functional interface, while JSON::XS/2 uses the OO interface
1350 with pretty-printing and hashkey sorting enabled, JSON::XS/3 enables
1351 shrink. JSON::DWIW/DS uses the deserialise function, while JSON::DWIW::FJ
1352 uses the from_json method). Higher is better:
1353
1354 module | encode | decode |
1355 --------------|------------|------------|
1356 JSON::DWIW/DS | 86302.551 | 102300.098 |
1357 JSON::DWIW/FJ | 86302.551 | 75983.768 |
1358 JSON::PP | 15827.562 | 6638.658 |
1359 JSON::Syck | 63358.066 | 47662.545 |
1360 JSON::XS | 511500.488 | 511500.488 |
1361 JSON::XS/2 | 291271.111 | 388361.481 |
1362 JSON::XS/3 | 361577.931 | 361577.931 |
1363 Storable | 66788.280 | 265462.278 |
1364 --------------+------------+------------+
1365
1366 That is, JSON::XS is almost six times faster than JSON::DWIW on encoding,
1367 about five times faster on decoding, and over thirty to seventy times
1368 faster than JSON's pure perl implementation. It also compares favourably
1369 to Storable for small amounts of data.
1370
1371 Using a longer test string (roughly 18KB, generated from Yahoo! Locals
1372 search API (L<http://dist.schmorp.de/misc/json/long.json>).
1373
1374 module | encode | decode |
1375 --------------|------------|------------|
1376 JSON::DWIW/DS | 1647.927 | 2673.916 |
1377 JSON::DWIW/FJ | 1630.249 | 2596.128 |
1378 JSON::PP | 400.640 | 62.311 |
1379 JSON::Syck | 1481.040 | 1524.869 |
1380 JSON::XS | 20661.596 | 9541.183 |
1381 JSON::XS/2 | 10683.403 | 9416.938 |
1382 JSON::XS/3 | 20661.596 | 9400.054 |
1383 Storable | 19765.806 | 10000.725 |
1384 --------------+------------+------------+
1385
1386 Again, JSON::XS leads by far (except for Storable which non-surprisingly
1387 decodes a bit faster).
1388
1389 On large strings containing lots of high Unicode characters, some modules
1390 (such as JSON::PC) seem to decode faster than JSON::XS, but the result
1391 will be broken due to missing (or wrong) Unicode handling. Others refuse
1392 to decode or encode properly, so it was impossible to prepare a fair
1393 comparison table for that case.
1394
1395
1396 =head1 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
1397
1398 When you are using JSON in a protocol, talking to untrusted potentially
1399 hostile creatures requires relatively few measures.
1400
1401 First of all, your JSON decoder should be secure, that is, should not have
1402 any buffer overflows. Obviously, this module should ensure that and I am
1403 trying hard on making that true, but you never know.
1404
1405 Second, you need to avoid resource-starving attacks. That means you should
1406 limit the size of JSON texts you accept, or make sure then when your
1407 resources run out, that's just fine (e.g. by using a separate process that
1408 can crash safely). The size of a JSON text in octets or characters is
1409 usually a good indication of the size of the resources required to decode
1410 it into a Perl structure. While JSON::XS can check the size of the JSON
1411 text, it might be too late when you already have it in memory, so you
1412 might want to check the size before you accept the string.
1413
1414 Third, JSON::XS recurses using the C stack when decoding objects and
1415 arrays. The C stack is a limited resource: for instance, on my amd64
1416 machine with 8MB of stack size I can decode around 180k nested arrays but
1417 only 14k nested JSON objects (due to perl itself recursing deeply on croak
1418 to free the temporary). If that is exceeded, the program crashes. To be
1419 conservative, the default nesting limit is set to 512. If your process
1420 has a smaller stack, you should adjust this setting accordingly with the
1421 C<max_depth> method.
1422
1423 Something else could bomb you, too, that I forgot to think of. In that
1424 case, you get to keep the pieces. I am always open for hints, though...
1425
1426 Also keep in mind that JSON::XS might leak contents of your Perl data
1427 structures in its error messages, so when you serialise sensitive
1428 information you might want to make sure that exceptions thrown by JSON::XS
1429 will not end up in front of untrusted eyes.
1430
1431 If you are using JSON::XS to return packets to consumption
1432 by JavaScript scripts in a browser you should have a look at
1433 L<http://blog.archive.jpsykes.com/47/practical-csrf-and-json-security/> to
1434 see whether you are vulnerable to some common attack vectors (which really
1435 are browser design bugs, but it is still you who will have to deal with
1436 it, as major browser developers care only for features, not about getting
1437 security right).
1438
1439
1440 =head1 THREADS
1441
1442 This module is I<not> guaranteed to be thread safe and there are no
1443 plans to change this until Perl gets thread support (as opposed to the
1444 horribly slow so-called "threads" which are simply slow and bloated
1445 process simulations - use fork, it's I<much> faster, cheaper, better).
1446
1447 (It might actually work, but you have been warned).
1448
1449
1450 =head1 BUGS
1451
1452 While the goal of this module is to be correct, that unfortunately does
1453 not mean it's bug-free, only that I think its design is bug-free. If you
1454 keep reporting bugs they will be fixed swiftly, though.
1455
1456 Please refrain from using rt.cpan.org or any other bug reporting
1457 service. I put the contact address into my modules for a reason.
1458
1459 =cut
1460
1461 our $true = do { bless \(my $dummy = 1), "JSON::XS::Boolean" };
1462 our $false = do { bless \(my $dummy = 0), "JSON::XS::Boolean" };
1463
1464 sub true() { $true }
1465 sub false() { $false }
1466
1467 sub is_bool($) {
1468 UNIVERSAL::isa $_[0], "JSON::XS::Boolean"
1469 # or UNIVERSAL::isa $_[0], "JSON::Literal"
1470 }
1471
1472 XSLoader::load "JSON::XS", $VERSION;
1473
1474 package JSON::XS::Boolean;
1475
1476 use overload
1477 "0+" => sub { ${$_[0]} },
1478 "++" => sub { $_[0] = ${$_[0]} + 1 },
1479 "--" => sub { $_[0] = ${$_[0]} - 1 },
1480 fallback => 1;
1481
1482 1;
1483
1484 =head1 SEE ALSO
1485
1486 The F<json_xs> command line utility for quick experiments.
1487
1488 =head1 AUTHOR
1489
1490 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
1491 http://home.schmorp.de/
1492
1493 =cut
1494