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