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Revision: 1.142
Committed: Fri Oct 25 19:57:42 2013 UTC (10 years, 6 months ago) by root
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# 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.
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 = 2.34;
107 our @ISA = qw(Exporter);
108
109 our @EXPORT = qw(encode_json decode_json);
110
111 use Exporter;
112 use XSLoader;
113
114 =head1 FUNCTIONAL INTERFACE
115
116 The following convenience methods are provided by this module. They are
117 exported by default:
118
119 =over 4
120
121 =item $json_text = encode_json $perl_scalar
122
123 Converts the given Perl data structure to a UTF-8 encoded, binary string
124 (that is, the string contains octets only). Croaks on error.
125
126 This function call is functionally identical to:
127
128 $json_text = JSON::XS->new->utf8->encode ($perl_scalar)
129
130 Except being faster.
131
132 =item $perl_scalar = decode_json $json_text
133
134 The opposite of C<encode_json>: expects an UTF-8 (binary) string and tries
135 to parse that as an UTF-8 encoded JSON text, returning the resulting
136 reference. Croaks on error.
137
138 This function call is functionally identical to:
139
140 $perl_scalar = JSON::XS->new->utf8->decode ($json_text)
141
142 Except being faster.
143
144 =item $is_boolean = JSON::XS::is_bool $scalar
145
146 Returns true if the passed scalar represents either JSON::XS::true or
147 JSON::XS::false, two constants that act like C<1> and C<0>, respectively
148 and are used to represent JSON C<true> and C<false> values in Perl.
149
150 See MAPPING, below, for more information on how JSON values are mapped to
151 Perl.
152
153 =back
154
155
156 =head1 A FEW NOTES ON UNICODE AND PERL
157
158 Since this often leads to confusion, here are a few very clear words on
159 how Unicode works in Perl, modulo bugs.
160
161 =over 4
162
163 =item 1. Perl strings can store characters with ordinal values > 255.
164
165 This enables you to store Unicode characters as single characters in a
166 Perl string - very natural.
167
168 =item 2. Perl does I<not> associate an encoding with your strings.
169
170 ... until you force it to, e.g. when matching it against a regex, or
171 printing the scalar to a file, in which case Perl either interprets your
172 string as locale-encoded text, octets/binary, or as Unicode, depending
173 on various settings. In no case is an encoding stored together with your
174 data, it is I<use> that decides encoding, not any magical meta data.
175
176 =item 3. The internal utf-8 flag has no meaning with regards to the
177 encoding of your string.
178
179 Just ignore that flag unless you debug a Perl bug, a module written in
180 XS or want to dive into the internals of perl. Otherwise it will only
181 confuse you, as, despite the name, it says nothing about how your string
182 is encoded. You can have Unicode strings with that flag set, with that
183 flag clear, and you can have binary data with that flag set and that flag
184 clear. Other possibilities exist, too.
185
186 If you didn't know about that flag, just the better, pretend it doesn't
187 exist.
188
189 =item 4. A "Unicode String" is simply a string where each character can be
190 validly interpreted as a Unicode code point.
191
192 If you have UTF-8 encoded data, it is no longer a Unicode string, but a
193 Unicode string encoded in UTF-8, giving you a binary string.
194
195 =item 5. A string containing "high" (> 255) character values is I<not> a UTF-8 string.
196
197 It's a fact. Learn to live with it.
198
199 =back
200
201 I hope this helps :)
202
203
204 =head1 OBJECT-ORIENTED INTERFACE
205
206 The object oriented interface lets you configure your own encoding or
207 decoding style, within the limits of supported formats.
208
209 =over 4
210
211 =item $json = new JSON::XS
212
213 Creates a new JSON::XS object that can be used to de/encode JSON
214 strings. All boolean flags described below are by default I<disabled>.
215
216 The mutators for flags all return the JSON object again and thus calls can
217 be chained:
218
219 my $json = JSON::XS->new->utf8->space_after->encode ({a => [1,2]})
220 => {"a": [1, 2]}
221
222 =item $json = $json->ascii ([$enable])
223
224 =item $enabled = $json->get_ascii
225
226 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will not
227 generate characters outside the code range C<0..127> (which is ASCII). Any
228 Unicode characters outside that range will be escaped using either a
229 single \uXXXX (BMP characters) or a double \uHHHH\uLLLLL escape sequence,
230 as per RFC4627. The resulting encoded JSON text can be treated as a native
231 Unicode string, an ascii-encoded, latin1-encoded or UTF-8 encoded string,
232 or any other superset of ASCII.
233
234 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not escape Unicode
235 characters unless required by the JSON syntax or other flags. This results
236 in a faster and more compact format.
237
238 See also the section I<ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES> later in this
239 document.
240
241 The main use for this flag is to produce JSON texts that can be
242 transmitted over a 7-bit channel, as the encoded JSON texts will not
243 contain any 8 bit characters.
244
245 JSON::XS->new->ascii (1)->encode ([chr 0x10401])
246 => ["\ud801\udc01"]
247
248 =item $json = $json->latin1 ([$enable])
249
250 =item $enabled = $json->get_latin1
251
252 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will encode
253 the resulting JSON text as latin1 (or iso-8859-1), escaping any characters
254 outside the code range C<0..255>. The resulting string can be treated as a
255 latin1-encoded JSON text or a native Unicode string. The C<decode> method
256 will not be affected in any way by this flag, as C<decode> by default
257 expects Unicode, which is a strict superset of latin1.
258
259 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not escape Unicode
260 characters unless required by the JSON syntax or other flags.
261
262 See also the section I<ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES> later in this
263 document.
264
265 The main use for this flag is efficiently encoding binary data as JSON
266 text, as most octets will not be escaped, resulting in a smaller encoded
267 size. The disadvantage is that the resulting JSON text is encoded
268 in latin1 (and must correctly be treated as such when storing and
269 transferring), a rare encoding for JSON. It is therefore most useful when
270 you want to store data structures known to contain binary data efficiently
271 in files or databases, not when talking to other JSON encoders/decoders.
272
273 JSON::XS->new->latin1->encode (["\x{89}\x{abc}"]
274 => ["\x{89}\\u0abc"] # (perl syntax, U+abc escaped, U+89 not)
275
276 =item $json = $json->utf8 ([$enable])
277
278 =item $enabled = $json->get_utf8
279
280 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will encode
281 the JSON result into UTF-8, as required by many protocols, while the
282 C<decode> method expects to be handled an UTF-8-encoded string. Please
283 note that UTF-8-encoded strings do not contain any characters outside the
284 range C<0..255>, they are thus useful for bytewise/binary I/O. In future
285 versions, enabling this option might enable autodetection of the UTF-16
286 and UTF-32 encoding families, as described in RFC4627.
287
288 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will return the JSON
289 string as a (non-encoded) Unicode string, while C<decode> expects thus a
290 Unicode string. Any decoding or encoding (e.g. to UTF-8 or UTF-16) needs
291 to be done yourself, e.g. using the Encode module.
292
293 See also the section I<ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES> later in this
294 document.
295
296 Example, output UTF-16BE-encoded JSON:
297
298 use Encode;
299 $jsontext = encode "UTF-16BE", JSON::XS->new->encode ($object);
300
301 Example, decode UTF-32LE-encoded JSON:
302
303 use Encode;
304 $object = JSON::XS->new->decode (decode "UTF-32LE", $jsontext);
305
306 =item $json = $json->pretty ([$enable])
307
308 This enables (or disables) all of the C<indent>, C<space_before> and
309 C<space_after> (and in the future possibly more) flags in one call to
310 generate the most readable (or most compact) form possible.
311
312 Example, pretty-print some simple structure:
313
314 my $json = JSON::XS->new->pretty(1)->encode ({a => [1,2]})
315 =>
316 {
317 "a" : [
318 1,
319 2
320 ]
321 }
322
323 =item $json = $json->indent ([$enable])
324
325 =item $enabled = $json->get_indent
326
327 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will use a multiline
328 format as output, putting every array member or object/hash key-value pair
329 into its own line, indenting them properly.
330
331 If C<$enable> is false, no newlines or indenting will be produced, and the
332 resulting JSON text is guaranteed not to contain any C<newlines>.
333
334 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts.
335
336 =item $json = $json->space_before ([$enable])
337
338 =item $enabled = $json->get_space_before
339
340 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will add an extra
341 optional space before the C<:> separating keys from values in JSON objects.
342
343 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not add any extra
344 space at those places.
345
346 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts. You will also
347 most likely combine this setting with C<space_after>.
348
349 Example, space_before enabled, space_after and indent disabled:
350
351 {"key" :"value"}
352
353 =item $json = $json->space_after ([$enable])
354
355 =item $enabled = $json->get_space_after
356
357 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will add an extra
358 optional space after the C<:> separating keys from values in JSON objects
359 and extra whitespace after the C<,> separating key-value pairs and array
360 members.
361
362 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not add any extra
363 space at those places.
364
365 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts.
366
367 Example, space_before and indent disabled, space_after enabled:
368
369 {"key": "value"}
370
371 =item $json = $json->relaxed ([$enable])
372
373 =item $enabled = $json->get_relaxed
374
375 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then C<decode> will accept some
376 extensions to normal JSON syntax (see below). C<encode> will not be
377 affected in anyway. I<Be aware that this option makes you accept invalid
378 JSON texts as if they were valid!>. I suggest only to use this option to
379 parse application-specific files written by humans (configuration files,
380 resource files etc.)
381
382 If C<$enable> is false (the default), then C<decode> will only accept
383 valid JSON texts.
384
385 Currently accepted extensions are:
386
387 =over 4
388
389 =item * list items can have an end-comma
390
391 JSON I<separates> array elements and key-value pairs with commas. This
392 can be annoying if you write JSON texts manually and want to be able to
393 quickly append elements, so this extension accepts comma at the end of
394 such items not just between them:
395
396 [
397 1,
398 2, <- this comma not normally allowed
399 ]
400 {
401 "k1": "v1",
402 "k2": "v2", <- this comma not normally allowed
403 }
404
405 =item * shell-style '#'-comments
406
407 Whenever JSON allows whitespace, shell-style comments are additionally
408 allowed. They are terminated by the first carriage-return or line-feed
409 character, after which more white-space and comments are allowed.
410
411 [
412 1, # this comment not allowed in JSON
413 # neither this one...
414 ]
415
416 =back
417
418 =item $json = $json->canonical ([$enable])
419
420 =item $enabled = $json->get_canonical
421
422 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will output JSON objects
423 by sorting their keys. This is adding a comparatively high overhead.
424
425 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will output key-value
426 pairs in the order Perl stores them (which will likely change between runs
427 of the same script, and can change even within the same run from 5.18
428 onwards).
429
430 This option is useful if you want the same data structure to be encoded as
431 the same JSON text (given the same overall settings). If it is disabled,
432 the same hash might be encoded differently even if contains the same data,
433 as key-value pairs have no inherent ordering in Perl.
434
435 This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts.
436
437 This setting has currently no effect on tied hashes.
438
439 =item $json = $json->allow_nonref ([$enable])
440
441 =item $enabled = $json->get_allow_nonref
442
443 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method can convert a
444 non-reference into its corresponding string, number or null JSON value,
445 which is an extension to RFC4627. Likewise, C<decode> will accept those JSON
446 values instead of croaking.
447
448 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will croak if it isn't
449 passed an arrayref or hashref, as JSON texts must either be an object
450 or array. Likewise, C<decode> will croak if given something that is not a
451 JSON object or array.
452
453 Example, encode a Perl scalar as JSON value with enabled C<allow_nonref>,
454 resulting in an invalid JSON text:
455
456 JSON::XS->new->allow_nonref->encode ("Hello, World!")
457 => "Hello, World!"
458
459 =item $json = $json->allow_unknown ([$enable])
460
461 =item $enabled = $json->get_allow_unknown
462
463 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then C<encode> will I<not> throw an
464 exception when it encounters values it cannot represent in JSON (for
465 example, filehandles) but instead will encode a JSON C<null> value. Note
466 that blessed objects are not included here and are handled separately by
467 c<allow_nonref>.
468
469 If C<$enable> is false (the default), then C<encode> will throw an
470 exception when it encounters anything it cannot encode as JSON.
471
472 This option does not affect C<decode> in any way, and it is recommended to
473 leave it off unless you know your communications partner.
474
475 =item $json = $json->allow_blessed ([$enable])
476
477 =item $enabled = $json->get_allow_blessed
478
479 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will not
480 barf when it encounters a blessed reference. Instead, the value of the
481 B<convert_blessed> option will decide whether C<null> (C<convert_blessed>
482 disabled or no C<TO_JSON> method found) or a representation of the
483 object (C<convert_blessed> enabled and C<TO_JSON> method found) is being
484 encoded. Has no effect on C<decode>.
485
486 If C<$enable> is false (the default), then C<encode> will throw an
487 exception when it encounters a blessed object.
488
489 =item $json = $json->convert_blessed ([$enable])
490
491 =item $enabled = $json->get_convert_blessed
492
493 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then C<encode>, upon encountering a
494 blessed object, will check for the availability of the C<TO_JSON> method
495 on the object's class. If found, it will be called in scalar context
496 and the resulting scalar will be encoded instead of the object. If no
497 C<TO_JSON> method is found, the value of C<allow_blessed> will decide what
498 to do.
499
500 The C<TO_JSON> method may safely call die if it wants. If C<TO_JSON>
501 returns other blessed objects, those will be handled in the same
502 way. C<TO_JSON> must take care of not causing an endless recursion cycle
503 (== crash) in this case. The name of C<TO_JSON> was chosen because other
504 methods called by the Perl core (== not by the user of the object) are
505 usually in upper case letters and to avoid collisions with any C<to_json>
506 function or method.
507
508 This setting does not yet influence C<decode> in any way, but in the
509 future, global hooks might get installed that influence C<decode> and are
510 enabled by this setting.
511
512 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<allow_blessed> setting will decide what
513 to do when a blessed object is found.
514
515 =item $json = $json->filter_json_object ([$coderef->($hashref)])
516
517 When C<$coderef> is specified, it will be called from C<decode> each
518 time it decodes a JSON object. The only argument is a reference to the
519 newly-created hash. If the code references returns a single scalar (which
520 need not be a reference), this value (i.e. a copy of that scalar to avoid
521 aliasing) is inserted into the deserialised data structure. If it returns
522 an empty list (NOTE: I<not> C<undef>, which is a valid scalar), the
523 original deserialised hash will be inserted. This setting can slow down
524 decoding considerably.
525
526 When C<$coderef> is omitted or undefined, any existing callback will
527 be removed and C<decode> will not change the deserialised hash in any
528 way.
529
530 Example, convert all JSON objects into the integer 5:
531
532 my $js = JSON::XS->new->filter_json_object (sub { 5 });
533 # returns [5]
534 $js->decode ('[{}]')
535 # throw an exception because allow_nonref is not enabled
536 # so a lone 5 is not allowed.
537 $js->decode ('{"a":1, "b":2}');
538
539 =item $json = $json->filter_json_single_key_object ($key [=> $coderef->($value)])
540
541 Works remotely similar to C<filter_json_object>, but is only called for
542 JSON objects having a single key named C<$key>.
543
544 This C<$coderef> is called before the one specified via
545 C<filter_json_object>, if any. It gets passed the single value in the JSON
546 object. If it returns a single value, it will be inserted into the data
547 structure. If it returns nothing (not even C<undef> but the empty list),
548 the callback from C<filter_json_object> will be called next, as if no
549 single-key callback were specified.
550
551 If C<$coderef> is omitted or undefined, the corresponding callback will be
552 disabled. There can only ever be one callback for a given key.
553
554 As this callback gets called less often then the C<filter_json_object>
555 one, decoding speed will not usually suffer as much. Therefore, single-key
556 objects make excellent targets to serialise Perl objects into, especially
557 as single-key JSON objects are as close to the type-tagged value concept
558 as JSON gets (it's basically an ID/VALUE tuple). Of course, JSON does not
559 support this in any way, so you need to make sure your data never looks
560 like a serialised Perl hash.
561
562 Typical names for the single object key are C<__class_whatever__>, or
563 C<$__dollars_are_rarely_used__$> or C<}ugly_brace_placement>, or even
564 things like C<__class_md5sum(classname)__>, to reduce the risk of clashing
565 with real hashes.
566
567 Example, decode JSON objects of the form C<< { "__widget__" => <id> } >>
568 into the corresponding C<< $WIDGET{<id>} >> object:
569
570 # return whatever is in $WIDGET{5}:
571 JSON::XS
572 ->new
573 ->filter_json_single_key_object (__widget__ => sub {
574 $WIDGET{ $_[0] }
575 })
576 ->decode ('{"__widget__": 5')
577
578 # this can be used with a TO_JSON method in some "widget" class
579 # for serialisation to json:
580 sub WidgetBase::TO_JSON {
581 my ($self) = @_;
582
583 unless ($self->{id}) {
584 $self->{id} = ..get..some..id..;
585 $WIDGET{$self->{id}} = $self;
586 }
587
588 { __widget__ => $self->{id} }
589 }
590
591 =item $json = $json->shrink ([$enable])
592
593 =item $enabled = $json->get_shrink
594
595 Perl usually over-allocates memory a bit when allocating space for
596 strings. This flag optionally resizes strings generated by either
597 C<encode> or C<decode> to their minimum size possible. This can save
598 memory when your JSON texts are either very very long or you have many
599 short strings. It will also try to downgrade any strings to octet-form
600 if possible: perl stores strings internally either in an encoding called
601 UTF-X or in octet-form. The latter cannot store everything but uses less
602 space in general (and some buggy Perl or C code might even rely on that
603 internal representation being used).
604
605 The actual definition of what shrink does might change in future versions,
606 but it will always try to save space at the expense of time.
607
608 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), the string returned by C<encode> will
609 be shrunk-to-fit, while all strings generated by C<decode> will also be
610 shrunk-to-fit.
611
612 If C<$enable> is false, then the normal perl allocation algorithms are used.
613 If you work with your data, then this is likely to be faster.
614
615 In the future, this setting might control other things, such as converting
616 strings that look like integers or floats into integers or floats
617 internally (there is no difference on the Perl level), saving space.
618
619 =item $json = $json->max_depth ([$maximum_nesting_depth])
620
621 =item $max_depth = $json->get_max_depth
622
623 Sets the maximum nesting level (default C<512>) accepted while encoding
624 or decoding. If a higher nesting level is detected in JSON text or a Perl
625 data structure, then the encoder and decoder will stop and croak at that
626 point.
627
628 Nesting level is defined by number of hash- or arrayrefs that the encoder
629 needs to traverse to reach a given point or the number of C<{> or C<[>
630 characters without their matching closing parenthesis crossed to reach a
631 given character in a string.
632
633 Setting the maximum depth to one disallows any nesting, so that ensures
634 that the object is only a single hash/object or array.
635
636 If no argument is given, the highest possible setting will be used, which
637 is rarely useful.
638
639 Note that nesting is implemented by recursion in C. The default value has
640 been chosen to be as large as typical operating systems allow without
641 crashing.
642
643 See SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS, below, for more info on why this is useful.
644
645 =item $json = $json->max_size ([$maximum_string_size])
646
647 =item $max_size = $json->get_max_size
648
649 Set the maximum length a JSON text may have (in bytes) where decoding is
650 being attempted. The default is C<0>, meaning no limit. When C<decode>
651 is called on a string that is longer then this many bytes, it will not
652 attempt to decode the string but throw an exception. This setting has no
653 effect on C<encode> (yet).
654
655 If no argument is given, the limit check will be deactivated (same as when
656 C<0> is specified).
657
658 See SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS, below, for more info on why this is useful.
659
660 =item $json_text = $json->encode ($perl_scalar)
661
662 Converts the given Perl value or data structure to its JSON
663 representation. Croaks on error.
664
665 =item $perl_scalar = $json->decode ($json_text)
666
667 The opposite of C<encode>: expects a JSON text and tries to parse it,
668 returning the resulting simple scalar or reference. Croaks on error.
669
670 =item ($perl_scalar, $characters) = $json->decode_prefix ($json_text)
671
672 This works like the C<decode> method, but instead of raising an exception
673 when there is trailing garbage after the first JSON object, it will
674 silently stop parsing there and return the number of characters consumed
675 so far.
676
677 This is useful if your JSON texts are not delimited by an outer protocol
678 (which is not the brightest thing to do in the first place) and you need
679 to know where the JSON text ends.
680
681 JSON::XS->new->decode_prefix ("[1] the tail")
682 => ([], 3)
683
684 =back
685
686
687 =head1 INCREMENTAL PARSING
688
689 In some cases, there is the need for incremental parsing of JSON
690 texts. While this module always has to keep both JSON text and resulting
691 Perl data structure in memory at one time, it does allow you to parse a
692 JSON stream incrementally. It does so by accumulating text until it has
693 a full JSON object, which it then can decode. This process is similar to
694 using C<decode_prefix> to see if a full JSON object is available, but
695 is much more efficient (and can be implemented with a minimum of method
696 calls).
697
698 JSON::XS will only attempt to parse the JSON text once it is sure it
699 has enough text to get a decisive result, using a very simple but
700 truly incremental parser. This means that it sometimes won't stop as
701 early as the full parser, for example, it doesn't detect mismatched
702 parentheses. The only thing it guarantees is that it starts decoding as
703 soon as a syntactically valid JSON text has been seen. This means you need
704 to set resource limits (e.g. C<max_size>) to ensure the parser will stop
705 parsing in the presence if syntax errors.
706
707 The following methods implement this incremental parser.
708
709 =over 4
710
711 =item [void, scalar or list context] = $json->incr_parse ([$string])
712
713 This is the central parsing function. It can both append new text and
714 extract objects from the stream accumulated so far (both of these
715 functions are optional).
716
717 If C<$string> is given, then this string is appended to the already
718 existing JSON fragment stored in the C<$json> object.
719
720 After that, if the function is called in void context, it will simply
721 return without doing anything further. This can be used to add more text
722 in as many chunks as you want.
723
724 If the method is called in scalar context, then it will try to extract
725 exactly I<one> JSON object. If that is successful, it will return this
726 object, otherwise it will return C<undef>. If there is a parse error,
727 this method will croak just as C<decode> would do (one can then use
728 C<incr_skip> to skip the erroneous part). This is the most common way of
729 using the method.
730
731 And finally, in list context, it will try to extract as many objects
732 from the stream as it can find and return them, or the empty list
733 otherwise. For this to work, there must be no separators between the JSON
734 objects or arrays, instead they must be concatenated back-to-back. If
735 an error occurs, an exception will be raised as in the scalar context
736 case. Note that in this case, any previously-parsed JSON texts will be
737 lost.
738
739 Example: Parse some JSON arrays/objects in a given string and return
740 them.
741
742 my @objs = JSON::XS->new->incr_parse ("[5][7][1,2]");
743
744 =item $lvalue_string = $json->incr_text
745
746 This method returns the currently stored JSON fragment as an lvalue, that
747 is, you can manipulate it. This I<only> works when a preceding call to
748 C<incr_parse> in I<scalar context> successfully returned an object. Under
749 all other circumstances you must not call this function (I mean it.
750 although in simple tests it might actually work, it I<will> fail under
751 real world conditions). As a special exception, you can also call this
752 method before having parsed anything.
753
754 This function is useful in two cases: a) finding the trailing text after a
755 JSON object or b) parsing multiple JSON objects separated by non-JSON text
756 (such as commas).
757
758 =item $json->incr_skip
759
760 This will reset the state of the incremental parser and will remove
761 the parsed text from the input buffer so far. This is useful after
762 C<incr_parse> died, in which case the input buffer and incremental parser
763 state is left unchanged, to skip the text parsed so far and to reset the
764 parse state.
765
766 The difference to C<incr_reset> is that only text until the parse error
767 occurred is removed.
768
769 =item $json->incr_reset
770
771 This completely resets the incremental parser, that is, after this call,
772 it will be as if the parser had never parsed anything.
773
774 This is useful if you want to repeatedly parse JSON objects and want to
775 ignore any trailing data, which means you have to reset the parser after
776 each successful decode.
777
778 =back
779
780 =head2 LIMITATIONS
781
782 All options that affect decoding are supported, except
783 C<allow_nonref>. The reason for this is that it cannot be made to
784 work sensibly: JSON objects and arrays are self-delimited, i.e. you can concatenate
785 them back to back and still decode them perfectly. This does not hold true
786 for JSON numbers, however.
787
788 For example, is the string C<1> a single JSON number, or is it simply the
789 start of C<12>? Or is C<12> a single JSON number, or the concatenation
790 of C<1> and C<2>? In neither case you can tell, and this is why JSON::XS
791 takes the conservative route and disallows this case.
792
793 =head2 EXAMPLES
794
795 Some examples will make all this clearer. First, a simple example that
796 works similarly to C<decode_prefix>: We want to decode the JSON object at
797 the start of a string and identify the portion after the JSON object:
798
799 my $text = "[1,2,3] hello";
800
801 my $json = new JSON::XS;
802
803 my $obj = $json->incr_parse ($text)
804 or die "expected JSON object or array at beginning of string";
805
806 my $tail = $json->incr_text;
807 # $tail now contains " hello"
808
809 Easy, isn't it?
810
811 Now for a more complicated example: Imagine a hypothetical protocol where
812 you read some requests from a TCP stream, and each request is a JSON
813 array, without any separation between them (in fact, it is often useful to
814 use newlines as "separators", as these get interpreted as whitespace at
815 the start of the JSON text, which makes it possible to test said protocol
816 with C<telnet>...).
817
818 Here is how you'd do it (it is trivial to write this in an event-based
819 manner):
820
821 my $json = new JSON::XS;
822
823 # read some data from the socket
824 while (sysread $socket, my $buf, 4096) {
825
826 # split and decode as many requests as possible
827 for my $request ($json->incr_parse ($buf)) {
828 # act on the $request
829 }
830 }
831
832 Another complicated example: Assume you have a string with JSON objects
833 or arrays, all separated by (optional) comma characters (e.g. C<[1],[2],
834 [3]>). To parse them, we have to skip the commas between the JSON texts,
835 and here is where the lvalue-ness of C<incr_text> comes in useful:
836
837 my $text = "[1],[2], [3]";
838 my $json = new JSON::XS;
839
840 # void context, so no parsing done
841 $json->incr_parse ($text);
842
843 # now extract as many objects as possible. note the
844 # use of scalar context so incr_text can be called.
845 while (my $obj = $json->incr_parse) {
846 # do something with $obj
847
848 # now skip the optional comma
849 $json->incr_text =~ s/^ \s* , //x;
850 }
851
852 Now lets go for a very complex example: Assume that you have a gigantic
853 JSON array-of-objects, many gigabytes in size, and you want to parse it,
854 but you cannot load it into memory fully (this has actually happened in
855 the real world :).
856
857 Well, you lost, you have to implement your own JSON parser. But JSON::XS
858 can still help you: You implement a (very simple) array parser and let
859 JSON decode the array elements, which are all full JSON objects on their
860 own (this wouldn't work if the array elements could be JSON numbers, for
861 example):
862
863 my $json = new JSON::XS;
864
865 # open the monster
866 open my $fh, "<bigfile.json"
867 or die "bigfile: $!";
868
869 # first parse the initial "["
870 for (;;) {
871 sysread $fh, my $buf, 65536
872 or die "read error: $!";
873 $json->incr_parse ($buf); # void context, so no parsing
874
875 # Exit the loop once we found and removed(!) the initial "[".
876 # In essence, we are (ab-)using the $json object as a simple scalar
877 # we append data to.
878 last if $json->incr_text =~ s/^ \s* \[ //x;
879 }
880
881 # now we have the skipped the initial "[", so continue
882 # parsing all the elements.
883 for (;;) {
884 # in this loop we read data until we got a single JSON object
885 for (;;) {
886 if (my $obj = $json->incr_parse) {
887 # do something with $obj
888 last;
889 }
890
891 # add more data
892 sysread $fh, my $buf, 65536
893 or die "read error: $!";
894 $json->incr_parse ($buf); # void context, so no parsing
895 }
896
897 # in this loop we read data until we either found and parsed the
898 # separating "," between elements, or the final "]"
899 for (;;) {
900 # first skip whitespace
901 $json->incr_text =~ s/^\s*//;
902
903 # if we find "]", we are done
904 if ($json->incr_text =~ s/^\]//) {
905 print "finished.\n";
906 exit;
907 }
908
909 # if we find ",", we can continue with the next element
910 if ($json->incr_text =~ s/^,//) {
911 last;
912 }
913
914 # if we find anything else, we have a parse error!
915 if (length $json->incr_text) {
916 die "parse error near ", $json->incr_text;
917 }
918
919 # else add more data
920 sysread $fh, my $buf, 65536
921 or die "read error: $!";
922 $json->incr_parse ($buf); # void context, so no parsing
923 }
924
925 This is a complex example, but most of the complexity comes from the fact
926 that we are trying to be correct (bear with me if I am wrong, I never ran
927 the above example :).
928
929
930
931 =head1 MAPPING
932
933 This section describes how JSON::XS maps Perl values to JSON values and
934 vice versa. These mappings are designed to "do the right thing" in most
935 circumstances automatically, preserving round-tripping characteristics
936 (what you put in comes out as something equivalent).
937
938 For the more enlightened: note that in the following descriptions,
939 lowercase I<perl> refers to the Perl interpreter, while uppercase I<Perl>
940 refers to the abstract Perl language itself.
941
942
943 =head2 JSON -> PERL
944
945 =over 4
946
947 =item object
948
949 A JSON object becomes a reference to a hash in Perl. No ordering of object
950 keys is preserved (JSON does not preserve object key ordering itself).
951
952 =item array
953
954 A JSON array becomes a reference to an array in Perl.
955
956 =item string
957
958 A JSON string becomes a string scalar in Perl - Unicode codepoints in JSON
959 are represented by the same codepoints in the Perl string, so no manual
960 decoding is necessary.
961
962 =item number
963
964 A JSON number becomes either an integer, numeric (floating point) or
965 string scalar in perl, depending on its range and any fractional parts. On
966 the Perl level, there is no difference between those as Perl handles all
967 the conversion details, but an integer may take slightly less memory and
968 might represent more values exactly than floating point numbers.
969
970 If the number consists of digits only, JSON::XS will try to represent
971 it as an integer value. If that fails, it will try to represent it as
972 a numeric (floating point) value if that is possible without loss of
973 precision. Otherwise it will preserve the number as a string value (in
974 which case you lose roundtripping ability, as the JSON number will be
975 re-encoded to a JSON string).
976
977 Numbers containing a fractional or exponential part will always be
978 represented as numeric (floating point) values, possibly at a loss of
979 precision (in which case you might lose perfect roundtripping ability, but
980 the JSON number will still be re-encoded as a JSON number).
981
982 Note that precision is not accuracy - binary floating point values cannot
983 represent most decimal fractions exactly, and when converting from and to
984 floating point, JSON::XS only guarantees precision up to but not including
985 the least significant bit.
986
987 =item true, false
988
989 These JSON atoms become C<JSON::XS::true> and C<JSON::XS::false>,
990 respectively. They are overloaded to act almost exactly like the numbers
991 C<1> and C<0>. You can check whether a scalar is a JSON boolean by using
992 the C<JSON::XS::is_bool> function.
993
994 =item null
995
996 A JSON null atom becomes C<undef> in Perl.
997
998 =back
999
1000
1001 =head2 PERL -> JSON
1002
1003 The mapping from Perl to JSON is slightly more difficult, as Perl is a
1004 truly typeless language, so we can only guess which JSON type is meant by
1005 a Perl value.
1006
1007 =over 4
1008
1009 =item hash references
1010
1011 Perl hash references become JSON objects. As there is no inherent
1012 ordering in hash keys (or JSON objects), they will usually be encoded
1013 in a pseudo-random order. JSON::XS can optionally sort the hash keys
1014 (determined by the I<canonical> flag), so the same datastructure will
1015 serialise to the same JSON text (given same settings and version of
1016 JSON::XS), but this incurs a runtime overhead and is only rarely useful,
1017 e.g. when you want to compare some JSON text against another for equality.
1018
1019 =item array references
1020
1021 Perl array references become JSON arrays.
1022
1023 =item other references
1024
1025 Other unblessed references are generally not allowed and will cause an
1026 exception to be thrown, except for references to the integers C<0> and
1027 C<1>, which get turned into C<false> and C<true> atoms in JSON. You can
1028 also use C<JSON::XS::false> and C<JSON::XS::true> to improve readability.
1029
1030 encode_json [\0, JSON::XS::true] # yields [false,true]
1031
1032 =item JSON::XS::true, JSON::XS::false
1033
1034 These special values become JSON true and JSON false values,
1035 respectively. You can also use C<\1> and C<\0> directly if you want.
1036
1037 =item blessed objects
1038
1039 Blessed objects are not directly representable in JSON. See the
1040 C<allow_blessed> and C<convert_blessed> methods on various options on
1041 how to deal with this: basically, you can choose between throwing an
1042 exception, encoding the reference as if it weren't blessed, or provide
1043 your own serialiser method.
1044
1045 =item simple scalars
1046
1047 Simple Perl scalars (any scalar that is not a reference) are the most
1048 difficult objects to encode: JSON::XS will encode undefined scalars as
1049 JSON C<null> values, scalars that have last been used in a string context
1050 before encoding as JSON strings, and anything else as number value:
1051
1052 # dump as number
1053 encode_json [2] # yields [2]
1054 encode_json [-3.0e17] # yields [-3e+17]
1055 my $value = 5; encode_json [$value] # yields [5]
1056
1057 # used as string, so dump as string
1058 print $value;
1059 encode_json [$value] # yields ["5"]
1060
1061 # undef becomes null
1062 encode_json [undef] # yields [null]
1063
1064 You can force the type to be a JSON string by stringifying it:
1065
1066 my $x = 3.1; # some variable containing a number
1067 "$x"; # stringified
1068 $x .= ""; # another, more awkward way to stringify
1069 print $x; # perl does it for you, too, quite often
1070
1071 You can force the type to be a JSON number by numifying it:
1072
1073 my $x = "3"; # some variable containing a string
1074 $x += 0; # numify it, ensuring it will be dumped as a number
1075 $x *= 1; # same thing, the choice is yours.
1076
1077 You can not currently force the type in other, less obscure, ways. Tell me
1078 if you need this capability (but don't forget to explain why it's needed
1079 :).
1080
1081 Note that numerical precision has the same meaning as under Perl (so
1082 binary to decimal conversion follows the same rules as in Perl, which
1083 can differ to other languages). Also, your perl interpreter might expose
1084 extensions to the floating point numbers of your platform, such as
1085 infinities or NaN's - these cannot be represented in JSON, and it is an
1086 error to pass those in.
1087
1088 =back
1089
1090
1091 =head1 ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES
1092
1093 The interested reader might have seen a number of flags that signify
1094 encodings or codesets - C<utf8>, C<latin1> and C<ascii>. There seems to be
1095 some confusion on what these do, so here is a short comparison:
1096
1097 C<utf8> controls whether the JSON text created by C<encode> (and expected
1098 by C<decode>) is UTF-8 encoded or not, while C<latin1> and C<ascii> only
1099 control whether C<encode> escapes character values outside their respective
1100 codeset range. Neither of these flags conflict with each other, although
1101 some combinations make less sense than others.
1102
1103 Care has been taken to make all flags symmetrical with respect to
1104 C<encode> and C<decode>, that is, texts encoded with any combination of
1105 these flag values will be correctly decoded when the same flags are used
1106 - in general, if you use different flag settings while encoding vs. when
1107 decoding you likely have a bug somewhere.
1108
1109 Below comes a verbose discussion of these flags. Note that a "codeset" is
1110 simply an abstract set of character-codepoint pairs, while an encoding
1111 takes those codepoint numbers and I<encodes> them, in our case into
1112 octets. Unicode is (among other things) a codeset, UTF-8 is an encoding,
1113 and ISO-8859-1 (= latin 1) and ASCII are both codesets I<and> encodings at
1114 the same time, which can be confusing.
1115
1116 =over 4
1117
1118 =item C<utf8> flag disabled
1119
1120 When C<utf8> is disabled (the default), then C<encode>/C<decode> generate
1121 and expect Unicode strings, that is, characters with high ordinal Unicode
1122 values (> 255) will be encoded as such characters, and likewise such
1123 characters are decoded as-is, no changes to them will be done, except
1124 "(re-)interpreting" them as Unicode codepoints or Unicode characters,
1125 respectively (to Perl, these are the same thing in strings unless you do
1126 funny/weird/dumb stuff).
1127
1128 This is useful when you want to do the encoding yourself (e.g. when you
1129 want to have UTF-16 encoded JSON texts) or when some other layer does
1130 the encoding for you (for example, when printing to a terminal using a
1131 filehandle that transparently encodes to UTF-8 you certainly do NOT want
1132 to UTF-8 encode your data first and have Perl encode it another time).
1133
1134 =item C<utf8> flag enabled
1135
1136 If the C<utf8>-flag is enabled, C<encode>/C<decode> will encode all
1137 characters using the corresponding UTF-8 multi-byte sequence, and will
1138 expect your input strings to be encoded as UTF-8, that is, no "character"
1139 of the input string must have any value > 255, as UTF-8 does not allow
1140 that.
1141
1142 The C<utf8> flag therefore switches between two modes: disabled means you
1143 will get a Unicode string in Perl, enabled means you get an UTF-8 encoded
1144 octet/binary string in Perl.
1145
1146 =item C<latin1> or C<ascii> flags enabled
1147
1148 With C<latin1> (or C<ascii>) enabled, C<encode> will escape characters
1149 with ordinal values > 255 (> 127 with C<ascii>) and encode the remaining
1150 characters as specified by the C<utf8> flag.
1151
1152 If C<utf8> is disabled, then the result is also correctly encoded in those
1153 character sets (as both are proper subsets of Unicode, meaning that a
1154 Unicode string with all character values < 256 is the same thing as a
1155 ISO-8859-1 string, and a Unicode string with all character values < 128 is
1156 the same thing as an ASCII string in Perl).
1157
1158 If C<utf8> is enabled, you still get a correct UTF-8-encoded string,
1159 regardless of these flags, just some more characters will be escaped using
1160 C<\uXXXX> then before.
1161
1162 Note that ISO-8859-1-I<encoded> strings are not compatible with UTF-8
1163 encoding, while ASCII-encoded strings are. That is because the ISO-8859-1
1164 encoding is NOT a subset of UTF-8 (despite the ISO-8859-1 I<codeset> being
1165 a subset of Unicode), while ASCII is.
1166
1167 Surprisingly, C<decode> will ignore these flags and so treat all input
1168 values as governed by the C<utf8> flag. If it is disabled, this allows you
1169 to decode ISO-8859-1- and ASCII-encoded strings, as both strict subsets of
1170 Unicode. If it is enabled, you can correctly decode UTF-8 encoded strings.
1171
1172 So neither C<latin1> nor C<ascii> are incompatible with the C<utf8> flag -
1173 they only govern when the JSON output engine escapes a character or not.
1174
1175 The main use for C<latin1> is to relatively efficiently store binary data
1176 as JSON, at the expense of breaking compatibility with most JSON decoders.
1177
1178 The main use for C<ascii> is to force the output to not contain characters
1179 with values > 127, which means you can interpret the resulting string
1180 as UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, ASCII, KOI8-R or most about any character set and
1181 8-bit-encoding, and still get the same data structure back. This is useful
1182 when your channel for JSON transfer is not 8-bit clean or the encoding
1183 might be mangled in between (e.g. in mail), and works because ASCII is a
1184 proper subset of most 8-bit and multibyte encodings in use in the world.
1185
1186 =back
1187
1188
1189 =head2 JSON and ECMAscript
1190
1191 JSON syntax is based on how literals are represented in javascript (the
1192 not-standardised predecessor of ECMAscript) which is presumably why it is
1193 called "JavaScript Object Notation".
1194
1195 However, JSON is not a subset (and also not a superset of course) of
1196 ECMAscript (the standard) or javascript (whatever browsers actually
1197 implement).
1198
1199 If you want to use javascript's C<eval> function to "parse" JSON, you
1200 might run into parse errors for valid JSON texts, or the resulting data
1201 structure might not be queryable:
1202
1203 One of the problems is that U+2028 and U+2029 are valid characters inside
1204 JSON strings, but are not allowed in ECMAscript string literals, so the
1205 following Perl fragment will not output something that can be guaranteed
1206 to be parsable by javascript's C<eval>:
1207
1208 use JSON::XS;
1209
1210 print encode_json [chr 0x2028];
1211
1212 The right fix for this is to use a proper JSON parser in your javascript
1213 programs, and not rely on C<eval> (see for example Douglas Crockford's
1214 F<json2.js> parser).
1215
1216 If this is not an option, you can, as a stop-gap measure, simply encode to
1217 ASCII-only JSON:
1218
1219 use JSON::XS;
1220
1221 print JSON::XS->new->ascii->encode ([chr 0x2028]);
1222
1223 Note that this will enlarge the resulting JSON text quite a bit if you
1224 have many non-ASCII characters. You might be tempted to run some regexes
1225 to only escape U+2028 and U+2029, e.g.:
1226
1227 # DO NOT USE THIS!
1228 my $json = JSON::XS->new->utf8->encode ([chr 0x2028]);
1229 $json =~ s/\xe2\x80\xa8/\\u2028/g; # escape U+2028
1230 $json =~ s/\xe2\x80\xa9/\\u2029/g; # escape U+2029
1231 print $json;
1232
1233 Note that I<this is a bad idea>: the above only works for U+2028 and
1234 U+2029 and thus only for fully ECMAscript-compliant parsers. Many existing
1235 javascript implementations, however, have issues with other characters as
1236 well - using C<eval> naively simply I<will> cause problems.
1237
1238 Another problem is that some javascript implementations reserve
1239 some property names for their own purposes (which probably makes
1240 them non-ECMAscript-compliant). For example, Iceweasel reserves the
1241 C<__proto__> property name for its own purposes.
1242
1243 If that is a problem, you could parse try to filter the resulting JSON
1244 output for these property strings, e.g.:
1245
1246 $json =~ s/"__proto__"\s*:/"__proto__renamed":/g;
1247
1248 This works because C<__proto__> is not valid outside of strings, so every
1249 occurrence of C<"__proto__"\s*:> must be a string used as property name.
1250
1251 If you know of other incompatibilities, please let me know.
1252
1253
1254 =head2 JSON and YAML
1255
1256 You often hear that JSON is a subset of YAML. This is, however, a mass
1257 hysteria(*) and very far from the truth (as of the time of this writing),
1258 so let me state it clearly: I<in general, there is no way to configure
1259 JSON::XS to output a data structure as valid YAML> that works in all
1260 cases.
1261
1262 If you really must use JSON::XS to generate YAML, you should use this
1263 algorithm (subject to change in future versions):
1264
1265 my $to_yaml = JSON::XS->new->utf8->space_after (1);
1266 my $yaml = $to_yaml->encode ($ref) . "\n";
1267
1268 This will I<usually> generate JSON texts that also parse as valid
1269 YAML. Please note that YAML has hardcoded limits on (simple) object key
1270 lengths that JSON doesn't have and also has different and incompatible
1271 unicode character escape syntax, so you should make sure that your hash
1272 keys are noticeably shorter than the 1024 "stream characters" YAML allows
1273 and that you do not have characters with codepoint values outside the
1274 Unicode BMP (basic multilingual page). YAML also does not allow C<\/>
1275 sequences in strings (which JSON::XS does not I<currently> generate, but
1276 other JSON generators might).
1277
1278 There might be other incompatibilities that I am not aware of (or the YAML
1279 specification has been changed yet again - it does so quite often). In
1280 general you should not try to generate YAML with a JSON generator or vice
1281 versa, or try to parse JSON with a YAML parser or vice versa: chances are
1282 high that you will run into severe interoperability problems when you
1283 least expect it.
1284
1285 =over 4
1286
1287 =item (*)
1288
1289 I have been pressured multiple times by Brian Ingerson (one of the
1290 authors of the YAML specification) to remove this paragraph, despite him
1291 acknowledging that the actual incompatibilities exist. As I was personally
1292 bitten by this "JSON is YAML" lie, I refused and said I will continue to
1293 educate people about these issues, so others do not run into the same
1294 problem again and again. After this, Brian called me a (quote)I<complete
1295 and worthless idiot>(unquote).
1296
1297 In my opinion, instead of pressuring and insulting people who actually
1298 clarify issues with YAML and the wrong statements of some of its
1299 proponents, I would kindly suggest reading the JSON spec (which is not
1300 that difficult or long) and finally make YAML compatible to it, and
1301 educating users about the changes, instead of spreading lies about the
1302 real compatibility for many I<years> and trying to silence people who
1303 point out that it isn't true.
1304
1305 Addendum/2009: the YAML 1.2 spec is still incompatible with JSON, even
1306 though the incompatibilities have been documented (and are known to Brian)
1307 for many years and the spec makes explicit claims that YAML is a superset
1308 of JSON. It would be so easy to fix, but apparently, bullying people and
1309 corrupting userdata is so much easier.
1310
1311 =back
1312
1313
1314 =head2 SPEED
1315
1316 It seems that JSON::XS is surprisingly fast, as shown in the following
1317 tables. They have been generated with the help of the C<eg/bench> program
1318 in the JSON::XS distribution, to make it easy to compare on your own
1319 system.
1320
1321 First comes a comparison between various modules using
1322 a very short single-line JSON string (also available at
1323 L<http://dist.schmorp.de/misc/json/short.json>).
1324
1325 {"method": "handleMessage", "params": ["user1",
1326 "we were just talking"], "id": null, "array":[1,11,234,-5,1e5,1e7,
1327 1, 0]}
1328
1329 It shows the number of encodes/decodes per second (JSON::XS uses
1330 the functional interface, while JSON::XS/2 uses the OO interface
1331 with pretty-printing and hashkey sorting enabled, JSON::XS/3 enables
1332 shrink. JSON::DWIW/DS uses the deserialise function, while JSON::DWIW::FJ
1333 uses the from_json method). Higher is better:
1334
1335 module | encode | decode |
1336 --------------|------------|------------|
1337 JSON::DWIW/DS | 86302.551 | 102300.098 |
1338 JSON::DWIW/FJ | 86302.551 | 75983.768 |
1339 JSON::PP | 15827.562 | 6638.658 |
1340 JSON::Syck | 63358.066 | 47662.545 |
1341 JSON::XS | 511500.488 | 511500.488 |
1342 JSON::XS/2 | 291271.111 | 388361.481 |
1343 JSON::XS/3 | 361577.931 | 361577.931 |
1344 Storable | 66788.280 | 265462.278 |
1345 --------------+------------+------------+
1346
1347 That is, JSON::XS is almost six times faster than JSON::DWIW on encoding,
1348 about five times faster on decoding, and over thirty to seventy times
1349 faster than JSON's pure perl implementation. It also compares favourably
1350 to Storable for small amounts of data.
1351
1352 Using a longer test string (roughly 18KB, generated from Yahoo! Locals
1353 search API (L<http://dist.schmorp.de/misc/json/long.json>).
1354
1355 module | encode | decode |
1356 --------------|------------|------------|
1357 JSON::DWIW/DS | 1647.927 | 2673.916 |
1358 JSON::DWIW/FJ | 1630.249 | 2596.128 |
1359 JSON::PP | 400.640 | 62.311 |
1360 JSON::Syck | 1481.040 | 1524.869 |
1361 JSON::XS | 20661.596 | 9541.183 |
1362 JSON::XS/2 | 10683.403 | 9416.938 |
1363 JSON::XS/3 | 20661.596 | 9400.054 |
1364 Storable | 19765.806 | 10000.725 |
1365 --------------+------------+------------+
1366
1367 Again, JSON::XS leads by far (except for Storable which non-surprisingly
1368 decodes a bit faster).
1369
1370 On large strings containing lots of high Unicode characters, some modules
1371 (such as JSON::PC) seem to decode faster than JSON::XS, but the result
1372 will be broken due to missing (or wrong) Unicode handling. Others refuse
1373 to decode or encode properly, so it was impossible to prepare a fair
1374 comparison table for that case.
1375
1376
1377 =head1 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
1378
1379 When you are using JSON in a protocol, talking to untrusted potentially
1380 hostile creatures requires relatively few measures.
1381
1382 First of all, your JSON decoder should be secure, that is, should not have
1383 any buffer overflows. Obviously, this module should ensure that and I am
1384 trying hard on making that true, but you never know.
1385
1386 Second, you need to avoid resource-starving attacks. That means you should
1387 limit the size of JSON texts you accept, or make sure then when your
1388 resources run out, that's just fine (e.g. by using a separate process that
1389 can crash safely). The size of a JSON text in octets or characters is
1390 usually a good indication of the size of the resources required to decode
1391 it into a Perl structure. While JSON::XS can check the size of the JSON
1392 text, it might be too late when you already have it in memory, so you
1393 might want to check the size before you accept the string.
1394
1395 Third, JSON::XS recurses using the C stack when decoding objects and
1396 arrays. The C stack is a limited resource: for instance, on my amd64
1397 machine with 8MB of stack size I can decode around 180k nested arrays but
1398 only 14k nested JSON objects (due to perl itself recursing deeply on croak
1399 to free the temporary). If that is exceeded, the program crashes. To be
1400 conservative, the default nesting limit is set to 512. If your process
1401 has a smaller stack, you should adjust this setting accordingly with the
1402 C<max_depth> method.
1403
1404 Something else could bomb you, too, that I forgot to think of. In that
1405 case, you get to keep the pieces. I am always open for hints, though...
1406
1407 Also keep in mind that JSON::XS might leak contents of your Perl data
1408 structures in its error messages, so when you serialise sensitive
1409 information you might want to make sure that exceptions thrown by JSON::XS
1410 will not end up in front of untrusted eyes.
1411
1412 If you are using JSON::XS to return packets to consumption
1413 by JavaScript scripts in a browser you should have a look at
1414 L<http://blog.archive.jpsykes.com/47/practical-csrf-and-json-security/> to
1415 see whether you are vulnerable to some common attack vectors (which really
1416 are browser design bugs, but it is still you who will have to deal with
1417 it, as major browser developers care only for features, not about getting
1418 security right).
1419
1420
1421 =head1 THREADS
1422
1423 This module is I<not> guaranteed to be thread safe and there are no
1424 plans to change this until Perl gets thread support (as opposed to the
1425 horribly slow so-called "threads" which are simply slow and bloated
1426 process simulations - use fork, it's I<much> faster, cheaper, better).
1427
1428 (It might actually work, but you have been warned).
1429
1430
1431 =head1 THE PERILS OF SETLOCALE
1432
1433 Sometimes people avoid the Perl locale support and directly call the
1434 system's setlocale function with C<LC_ALL>.
1435
1436 This breaks both perl and modules such as JSON::XS, as stringification of
1437 numbers no longer works correctly (e.g. C<$x = 0.1; print "$x"+1> might
1438 print C<1>, and JSON::XS might output illegal JSON as JSON::XS relies on
1439 perl to stringify numbers).
1440
1441 The solution is simple: don't call C<setlocale>, or use it for only those
1442 categories you need, such as C<LC_MESSAGES> or C<LC_CTYPE>.
1443
1444 If you need C<LC_NUMERIC>, you should enable it only around the code that
1445 actually needs it (avoiding stringification of numbers), and restore it
1446 afterwards.
1447
1448
1449 =head1 BUGS
1450
1451 While the goal of this module is to be correct, that unfortunately does
1452 not mean it's bug-free, only that I think its design is bug-free. If you
1453 keep reporting bugs they will be fixed swiftly, though.
1454
1455 Please refrain from using rt.cpan.org or any other bug reporting
1456 service. I put the contact address into my modules for a reason.
1457
1458 =cut
1459
1460 our $true = do { bless \(my $dummy = 1), "JSON::XS::Boolean" };
1461 our $false = do { bless \(my $dummy = 0), "JSON::XS::Boolean" };
1462
1463 sub true() { $true }
1464 sub false() { $false }
1465
1466 sub is_bool($) {
1467 UNIVERSAL::isa $_[0], "JSON::XS::Boolean"
1468 # or UNIVERSAL::isa $_[0], "JSON::Literal"
1469 }
1470
1471 XSLoader::load "JSON::XS", $VERSION;
1472
1473 package JSON::XS::Boolean;
1474
1475 use overload
1476 "0+" => sub { ${$_[0]} },
1477 "++" => sub { $_[0] = ${$_[0]} + 1 },
1478 "--" => sub { $_[0] = ${$_[0]} - 1 },
1479 fallback => 1;
1480
1481 1;
1482
1483 =head1 SEE ALSO
1484
1485 The F<json_xs> command line utility for quick experiments.
1486
1487 =head1 AUTHOR
1488
1489 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
1490 http://home.schmorp.de/
1491
1492 =cut
1493