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Revision: 1.46
Committed: Mon Jun 25 04:21:14 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<$enable> is true (or missing), then C<encode>, upon encountering a
336 blessed object, will check for the availability of the C<TO_JSON> method
337 on the object's class. If found, it will be called in scalar context
338 and the resulting scalar will be encoded instead of the object. If no
339 C<TO_JSON> method is found, the value of C<allow_blessed> will decide what
340 to do.
341
342 The C<TO_JSON> method may safely call die if it wants. If C<TO_JSON>
343 returns other blessed objects, those will be handled in the same
344 way. C<TO_JSON> must take care of not causing an endless recursion cycle
345 (== crash) in this case. The name of C<TO_JSON> was chosen because other
346 methods called by the Perl core (== not by the user of the object) are
347 usually in upper case letters and to avoid collisions with the C<to_json>
348 function.
349
350 This setting does not yet influence C<decode> in any way, but in the
351 future, global hooks might get installed that influence C<decode> and are
352 enabled by this setting.
353
354 If C<$enable> is false, then the C<allow_blessed> setting will decide what
355 to do when a blessed object is found.
356
357 =item $json = $json->shrink ([$enable])
358
359 Perl usually over-allocates memory a bit when allocating space for
360 strings. This flag optionally resizes strings generated by either
361 C<encode> or C<decode> to their minimum size possible. This can save
362 memory when your JSON texts are either very very long or you have many
363 short strings. It will also try to downgrade any strings to octet-form
364 if possible: perl stores strings internally either in an encoding called
365 UTF-X or in octet-form. The latter cannot store everything but uses less
366 space in general (and some buggy Perl or C code might even rely on that
367 internal representation being used).
368
369 The actual definition of what shrink does might change in future versions,
370 but it will always try to save space at the expense of time.
371
372 If C<$enable> is true (or missing), the string returned by C<encode> will
373 be shrunk-to-fit, while all strings generated by C<decode> will also be
374 shrunk-to-fit.
375
376 If C<$enable> is false, then the normal perl allocation algorithms are used.
377 If you work with your data, then this is likely to be faster.
378
379 In the future, this setting might control other things, such as converting
380 strings that look like integers or floats into integers or floats
381 internally (there is no difference on the Perl level), saving space.
382
383 =item $json = $json->max_depth ([$maximum_nesting_depth])
384
385 Sets the maximum nesting level (default C<512>) accepted while encoding
386 or decoding. If the JSON text or Perl data structure has an equal or
387 higher nesting level then this limit, then the encoder and decoder will
388 stop and croak at that point.
389
390 Nesting level is defined by number of hash- or arrayrefs that the encoder
391 needs to traverse to reach a given point or the number of C<{> or C<[>
392 characters without their matching closing parenthesis crossed to reach a
393 given character in a string.
394
395 Setting the maximum depth to one disallows any nesting, so that ensures
396 that the object is only a single hash/object or array.
397
398 The argument to C<max_depth> will be rounded up to the next nearest power
399 of two.
400
401 See SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS, below, for more info on why this is useful.
402
403 =item $json_text = $json->encode ($perl_scalar)
404
405 Converts the given Perl data structure (a simple scalar or a reference
406 to a hash or array) to its JSON representation. Simple scalars will be
407 converted into JSON string or number sequences, while references to arrays
408 become JSON arrays and references to hashes become JSON objects. Undefined
409 Perl values (e.g. C<undef>) become JSON C<null> values. Neither C<true>
410 nor C<false> values will be generated.
411
412 =item $perl_scalar = $json->decode ($json_text)
413
414 The opposite of C<encode>: expects a JSON text and tries to parse it,
415 returning the resulting simple scalar or reference. Croaks on error.
416
417 JSON numbers and strings become simple Perl scalars. JSON arrays become
418 Perl arrayrefs and JSON objects become Perl hashrefs. C<true> becomes
419 C<1>, C<false> becomes C<0> and C<null> becomes C<undef>.
420
421 =item ($perl_scalar, $characters) = $json->decode_prefix ($json_text)
422
423 This works like the C<decode> method, but instead of raising an exception
424 when there is trailing garbage after the first JSON object, it will
425 silently stop parsing there and return the number of characters consumed
426 so far.
427
428 This is useful if your JSON texts are not delimited by an outer protocol
429 (which is not the brightest thing to do in the first place) and you need
430 to know where the JSON text ends.
431
432 JSON::XS->new->decode_prefix ("[1] the tail")
433 => ([], 3)
434
435 =back
436
437
438 =head1 MAPPING
439
440 This section describes how JSON::XS maps Perl values to JSON values and
441 vice versa. These mappings are designed to "do the right thing" in most
442 circumstances automatically, preserving round-tripping characteristics
443 (what you put in comes out as something equivalent).
444
445 For the more enlightened: note that in the following descriptions,
446 lowercase I<perl> refers to the Perl interpreter, while uppcercase I<Perl>
447 refers to the abstract Perl language itself.
448
449
450 =head2 JSON -> PERL
451
452 =over 4
453
454 =item object
455
456 A JSON object becomes a reference to a hash in Perl. No ordering of object
457 keys is preserved (JSON does not preserver object key ordering itself).
458
459 =item array
460
461 A JSON array becomes a reference to an array in Perl.
462
463 =item string
464
465 A JSON string becomes a string scalar in Perl - Unicode codepoints in JSON
466 are represented by the same codepoints in the Perl string, so no manual
467 decoding is necessary.
468
469 =item number
470
471 A JSON number becomes either an integer or numeric (floating point)
472 scalar in perl, depending on its range and any fractional parts. On the
473 Perl level, there is no difference between those as Perl handles all the
474 conversion details, but an integer may take slightly less memory and might
475 represent more values exactly than (floating point) numbers.
476
477 =item true, false
478
479 These JSON atoms become C<JSON::XS::true> and C<JSON::XS::false>,
480 respectively. They are overloaded to act almost exactly like the numbers
481 C<1> and C<0>. You can check wether a scalar is a JSON boolean by using
482 the C<JSON::XS::is_bool> function.
483
484 =item null
485
486 A JSON null atom becomes C<undef> in Perl.
487
488 =back
489
490
491 =head2 PERL -> JSON
492
493 The mapping from Perl to JSON is slightly more difficult, as Perl is a
494 truly typeless language, so we can only guess which JSON type is meant by
495 a Perl value.
496
497 =over 4
498
499 =item hash references
500
501 Perl hash references become JSON objects. As there is no inherent ordering
502 in hash keys (or JSON objects), they will usually be encoded in a
503 pseudo-random order that can change between runs of the same program but
504 stays generally the same within a single run of a program. JSON::XS can
505 optionally sort the hash keys (determined by the I<canonical> flag), so
506 the same datastructure will serialise to the same JSON text (given same
507 settings and version of JSON::XS), but this incurs a runtime overhead
508 and is only rarely useful, e.g. when you want to compare some JSON text
509 against another for equality.
510
511 =item array references
512
513 Perl array references become JSON arrays.
514
515 =item other references
516
517 Other unblessed references are generally not allowed and will cause an
518 exception to be thrown, except for references to the integers C<0> and
519 C<1>, which get turned into C<false> and C<true> atoms in JSON. You can
520 also use C<JSON::XS::false> and C<JSON::XS::true> to improve readability.
521
522 to_json [\0,JSON::XS::true] # yields [false,true]
523
524 =item JSON::XS::true, JSON::XS::false
525
526 These special values become JSON true and JSON false values,
527 respectively. You cna alos use C<\1> and C<\0> directly if you want.
528
529 =item blessed objects
530
531 Blessed objects are not allowed. JSON::XS currently tries to encode their
532 underlying representation (hash- or arrayref), but this behaviour might
533 change in future versions.
534
535 =item simple scalars
536
537 Simple Perl scalars (any scalar that is not a reference) are the most
538 difficult objects to encode: JSON::XS will encode undefined scalars as
539 JSON null value, scalars that have last been used in a string context
540 before encoding as JSON strings and anything else as number value:
541
542 # dump as number
543 to_json [2] # yields [2]
544 to_json [-3.0e17] # yields [-3e+17]
545 my $value = 5; to_json [$value] # yields [5]
546
547 # used as string, so dump as string
548 print $value;
549 to_json [$value] # yields ["5"]
550
551 # undef becomes null
552 to_json [undef] # yields [null]
553
554 You can force the type to be a string by stringifying it:
555
556 my $x = 3.1; # some variable containing a number
557 "$x"; # stringified
558 $x .= ""; # another, more awkward way to stringify
559 print $x; # perl does it for you, too, quite often
560
561 You can force the type to be a number by numifying it:
562
563 my $x = "3"; # some variable containing a string
564 $x += 0; # numify it, ensuring it will be dumped as a number
565 $x *= 1; # same thing, the choise is yours.
566
567 You can not currently output JSON booleans or force the type in other,
568 less obscure, ways. Tell me if you need this capability.
569
570 =back
571
572
573 =head1 COMPARISON
574
575 As already mentioned, this module was created because none of the existing
576 JSON modules could be made to work correctly. First I will describe the
577 problems (or pleasures) I encountered with various existing JSON modules,
578 followed by some benchmark values. JSON::XS was designed not to suffer
579 from any of these problems or limitations.
580
581 =over 4
582
583 =item JSON 1.07
584
585 Slow (but very portable, as it is written in pure Perl).
586
587 Undocumented/buggy Unicode handling (how JSON handles unicode values is
588 undocumented. One can get far by feeding it unicode strings and doing
589 en-/decoding oneself, but unicode escapes are not working properly).
590
591 No roundtripping (strings get clobbered if they look like numbers, e.g.
592 the string C<2.0> will encode to C<2.0> instead of C<"2.0">, and that will
593 decode into the number 2.
594
595 =item JSON::PC 0.01
596
597 Very fast.
598
599 Undocumented/buggy Unicode handling.
600
601 No roundtripping.
602
603 Has problems handling many Perl values (e.g. regex results and other magic
604 values will make it croak).
605
606 Does not even generate valid JSON (C<{1,2}> gets converted to C<{1:2}>
607 which is not a valid JSON text.
608
609 Unmaintained (maintainer unresponsive for many months, bugs are not
610 getting fixed).
611
612 =item JSON::Syck 0.21
613
614 Very buggy (often crashes).
615
616 Very inflexible (no human-readable format supported, format pretty much
617 undocumented. I need at least a format for easy reading by humans and a
618 single-line compact format for use in a protocol, and preferably a way to
619 generate ASCII-only JSON texts).
620
621 Completely broken (and confusingly documented) Unicode handling (unicode
622 escapes are not working properly, you need to set ImplicitUnicode to
623 I<different> values on en- and decoding to get symmetric behaviour).
624
625 No roundtripping (simple cases work, but this depends on wether the scalar
626 value was used in a numeric context or not).
627
628 Dumping hashes may skip hash values depending on iterator state.
629
630 Unmaintained (maintainer unresponsive for many months, bugs are not
631 getting fixed).
632
633 Does not check input for validity (i.e. will accept non-JSON input and
634 return "something" instead of raising an exception. This is a security
635 issue: imagine two banks transfering money between each other using
636 JSON. One bank might parse a given non-JSON request and deduct money,
637 while the other might reject the transaction with a syntax error. While a
638 good protocol will at least recover, that is extra unnecessary work and
639 the transaction will still not succeed).
640
641 =item JSON::DWIW 0.04
642
643 Very fast. Very natural. Very nice.
644
645 Undocumented unicode handling (but the best of the pack. Unicode escapes
646 still don't get parsed properly).
647
648 Very inflexible.
649
650 No roundtripping.
651
652 Does not generate valid JSON texts (key strings are often unquoted, empty keys
653 result in nothing being output)
654
655 Does not check input for validity.
656
657 =back
658
659
660 =head2 JSON and YAML
661
662 You often hear that JSON is a subset (or a close subset) of YAML. This is,
663 however, a mass hysteria and very far from the truth. In general, there is
664 no way to configure JSON::XS to output a data structure as valid YAML.
665
666 If you really must use JSON::XS to generate YAML, you should use this
667 algorithm (subject to change in future versions):
668
669 my $to_yaml = JSON::XS->new->utf8->space_after (1);
670 my $yaml = $to_yaml->encode ($ref) . "\n";
671
672 This will usually generate JSON texts that also parse as valid
673 YAML. Please note that YAML has hardcoded limits on (simple) object key
674 lengths that JSON doesn't have, so you should make sure that your hash
675 keys are noticably shorter than the 1024 characters YAML allows.
676
677 There might be other incompatibilities that I am not aware of. In general
678 you should not try to generate YAML with a JSON generator or vice versa,
679 or try to parse JSON with a YAML parser or vice versa: chances are high
680 that you will run into severe interoperability problems.
681
682
683 =head2 SPEED
684
685 It seems that JSON::XS is surprisingly fast, as shown in the following
686 tables. They have been generated with the help of the C<eg/bench> program
687 in the JSON::XS distribution, to make it easy to compare on your own
688 system.
689
690 First comes a comparison between various modules using a very short
691 single-line JSON string:
692
693 {"method": "handleMessage", "params": ["user1", "we were just talking"], \
694 "id": null, "array":[1,11,234,-5,1e5,1e7, true, false]}
695
696 It shows the number of encodes/decodes per second (JSON::XS uses
697 the functional interface, while JSON::XS/2 uses the OO interface
698 with pretty-printing and hashkey sorting enabled, JSON::XS/3 enables
699 shrink). Higher is better:
700
701 module | encode | decode |
702 -----------|------------|------------|
703 JSON | 7645.468 | 4208.613 |
704 JSON::DWIW | 40721.398 | 77101.176 |
705 JSON::PC | 65948.176 | 78251.940 |
706 JSON::Syck | 22844.793 | 26479.192 |
707 JSON::XS | 388361.481 | 199728.762 |
708 JSON::XS/2 | 218453.333 | 192399.266 |
709 JSON::XS/3 | 338250.323 | 192399.266 |
710 Storable | 15779.925 | 14169.946 |
711 -----------+------------+------------+
712
713 That is, JSON::XS is about five times faster than JSON::DWIW on encoding,
714 about three times faster on decoding, and over fourty times faster
715 than JSON, even with pretty-printing and key sorting. It also compares
716 favourably to Storable for small amounts of data.
717
718 Using a longer test string (roughly 18KB, generated from Yahoo! Locals
719 search API (http://nanoref.com/yahooapis/mgPdGg):
720
721 module | encode | decode |
722 -----------|------------|------------|
723 JSON | 254.685 | 37.665 |
724 JSON::DWIW | 843.343 | 1049.731 |
725 JSON::PC | 3602.116 | 2307.352 |
726 JSON::Syck | 505.107 | 787.899 |
727 JSON::XS | 5747.196 | 3690.220 |
728 JSON::XS/2 | 3968.121 | 3676.634 |
729 JSON::XS/3 | 6105.246 | 3662.508 |
730 Storable | 4417.337 | 5285.161 |
731 -----------+------------+------------+
732
733 Again, JSON::XS leads by far (except for Storable which non-surprisingly
734 decodes faster).
735
736 On large strings containing lots of high unicode characters, some modules
737 (such as JSON::PC) seem to decode faster than JSON::XS, but the result
738 will be broken due to missing (or wrong) unicode handling. Others refuse
739 to decode or encode properly, so it was impossible to prepare a fair
740 comparison table for that case.
741
742
743 =head1 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
744
745 When you are using JSON in a protocol, talking to untrusted potentially
746 hostile creatures requires relatively few measures.
747
748 First of all, your JSON decoder should be secure, that is, should not have
749 any buffer overflows. Obviously, this module should ensure that and I am
750 trying hard on making that true, but you never know.
751
752 Second, you need to avoid resource-starving attacks. That means you should
753 limit the size of JSON texts you accept, or make sure then when your
754 resources run out, thats just fine (e.g. by using a separate process that
755 can crash safely). The size of a JSON text in octets or characters is
756 usually a good indication of the size of the resources required to decode
757 it into a Perl structure.
758
759 Third, JSON::XS recurses using the C stack when decoding objects and
760 arrays. The C stack is a limited resource: for instance, on my amd64
761 machine with 8MB of stack size I can decode around 180k nested arrays but
762 only 14k nested JSON objects (due to perl itself recursing deeply on croak
763 to free the temporary). If that is exceeded, the program crashes. to be
764 conservative, the default nesting limit is set to 512. If your process
765 has a smaller stack, you should adjust this setting accordingly with the
766 C<max_depth> method.
767
768 And last but least, something else could bomb you that I forgot to think
769 of. In that case, you get to keep the pieces. I am always open for hints,
770 though...
771
772 If you are using JSON::XS to return packets to consumption
773 by javascript scripts in a browser you should have a look at
774 L<http://jpsykes.com/47/practical-csrf-and-json-security> to see wether
775 you are vulnerable to some common attack vectors (which really are browser
776 design bugs, but it is still you who will have to deal with it, as major
777 browser developers care only for features, not about doing security
778 right).
779
780
781 =head1 BUGS
782
783 While the goal of this module is to be correct, that unfortunately does
784 not mean its bug-free, only that I think its design is bug-free. It is
785 still relatively early in its development. If you keep reporting bugs they
786 will be fixed swiftly, though.
787
788 =cut
789
790 our $true = do { bless \(my $dummy = 1), "JSON::XS::Boolean" };
791 our $false = do { bless \(my $dummy = 0), "JSON::XS::Boolean" };
792
793 sub true() { $true }
794 sub false() { $false }
795
796 sub is_bool($) {
797 UNIVERSAL::isa $_[0], "JSON::XS::Boolean"
798 # or UNIVERSAL::isa $_[0], "JSON::Literal"
799 }
800
801 XSLoader::load "JSON::XS", $VERSION;
802
803 package JSON::XS::Boolean;
804
805 use overload
806 "0+" => sub { ${$_[0]} },
807 "++" => sub { $_[0] = ${$_[0]} + 1 },
808 "--" => sub { $_[0] = ${$_[0]} - 1 },
809 fallback => 1;
810
811 1;
812
813 =head1 AUTHOR
814
815 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
816 http://home.schmorp.de/
817
818 =cut
819