cvsroot/JSON-XS/XS.pm

=head1 NAME

JSON::XS - JSON serialising/deserialising, done correctly and fast

=head1 SYNOPSIS

 use JSON::XS;

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This module converts Perl data structures to JSON and vice versa. Its
primary goal is to be I<correct> and its secondary goal is to be
I<fast>. To reach the latter goal it was written in C.

As this is the n-th-something JSON module on CPAN, what was the reason
to write yet another JSON module? While it seems there are many JSON
modules, none of them correctly handle all corner cases, and in most cases
their maintainers are unresponsive, gone missing, or not listening to bug
reports for other reasons.

See COMPARISON, below, for a comparison to some other JSON modules.

See MAPPING, below, on how JSON::XS maps perl values to JSON values and
vice versa.

=head2 FEATURES

=over 4

=item * correct handling of unicode issues

This module knows how to handle Unicode, and even documents how and when
it does so.

=item * round-trip integrity

When you serialise a perl data structure using only datatypes supported
by JSON, the deserialised data structure is identical on the Perl level.
(e.g. the string "2.0" doesn't suddenly become "2").

=item * strict checking of JSON correctness

There is no guessing, no generating of illegal JSON strings by default,
and only JSON is accepted as input by default (the latter is a security
feature).

=item * fast

Compared to other JSON modules, this module compares favourably in terms
of speed, too.

=item * simple to use

This module has both a simple functional interface as well as an OO
interface.

=item * reasonably versatile output formats

You can choose between the most compact guarenteed single-line format
possible (nice for simple line-based protocols), a pure-ascii format (for
when your transport is not 8-bit clean), or a pretty-printed format (for
when you want to read that stuff). Or you can combine those features in
whatever way you like.

=back

=cut

package JSON::XS;

BEGIN {
   $VERSION = '0.3';
   @ISA = qw(Exporter);

   @EXPORT = qw(to_json from_json);
   require Exporter;

   require XSLoader;
   XSLoader::load JSON::XS::, $VERSION;
}

=head1 FUNCTIONAL INTERFACE

The following convinience methods are provided by this module. They are
exported by default:

=over 4

=item $json_string = to_json $perl_scalar

Converts the given Perl data structure (a simple scalar or a reference to
a hash or array) to a UTF-8 encoded, binary string (that is, the string contains
octets only). Croaks on error.

This function call is functionally identical to C<< JSON::XS->new->utf8->encode ($perl_scalar) >>.

=item $perl_scalar = from_json $json_string

The opposite of C<to_json>: expects an UTF-8 (binary) string and tries to
parse that as an UTF-8 encoded JSON string, returning the resulting simple
scalar or reference. Croaks on error.

This function call is functionally identical to C<< JSON::XS->new->utf8->decode ($json_string) >>.

=back

=head1 OBJECT-ORIENTED INTERFACE

The object oriented interface lets you configure your own encoding or
decoding style, within the limits of supported formats.

=over 4

=item $json = new JSON::XS

Creates a new JSON::XS object that can be used to de/encode JSON
strings. All boolean flags described below are by default I<disabled>.

The mutators for flags all return the JSON object again and thus calls can
be chained:

   my $json = JSON::XS->new->utf8(1)->space_after(1)->encode ({a => [1,2]})
   => {"a": [1, 2]}

=item $json = $json->ascii ([$enable])

If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will
not generate characters outside the code range C<0..127>. Any unicode
characters outside that range will be escaped using either a single
\uXXXX (BMP characters) or a double \uHHHH\uLLLLL escape sequence, as per
RFC4627.

If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not escape Unicode
characters unless necessary.

  JSON::XS->new->ascii (1)->encode (chr 0x10401)
  => \ud801\udc01

=item $json = $json->utf8 ([$enable])

If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will encode
the JSON string into UTF-8, as required by many protocols, while the
C<decode> method expects to be handled an UTF-8-encoded string.  Please
note that UTF-8-encoded strings do not contain any characters outside the
range C<0..255>, they are thus useful for bytewise/binary I/O.

If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will return the JSON
string as a (non-encoded) unicode string, while C<decode> expects thus a
unicode string.  Any decoding or encoding (e.g. to UTF-8 or UTF-16) needs
to be done yourself, e.g. using the Encode module.

=item $json = $json->pretty ([$enable])

This enables (or disables) all of the C<indent>, C<space_before> and
C<space_after> (and in the future possibly more) flags in one call to
generate the most readable (or most compact) form possible.

   my $json = JSON::XS->new->pretty(1)->encode ({a => [1,2]})
   =>
   {
      "a" : [
         1,
         2
      ]
   }

=item $json = $json->indent ([$enable])

If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will use a multiline
format as output, putting every array member or object/hash key-value pair
into its own line, identing them properly.

If C<$enable> is false, no newlines or indenting will be produced, and the
resulting JSON strings is guarenteed not to contain any C<newlines>.

This setting has no effect when decoding JSON strings.

=item $json = $json->space_before ([$enable])

If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will add an extra
optional space before the C<:> separating keys from values in JSON objects.

If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not add any extra
space at those places.

This setting has no effect when decoding JSON strings. You will also most
likely combine this setting with C<space_after>.

=item $json = $json->space_after ([$enable])

If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will add an extra
optional space after the C<:> separating keys from values in JSON objects
and extra whitespace after the C<,> separating key-value pairs and array
members.

If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not add any extra
space at those places.

This setting has no effect when decoding JSON strings.

=item $json = $json->canonical ([$enable])

If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will output JSON objects
by sorting their keys. This is adding a comparatively high overhead.

If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will output key-value
pairs in the order Perl stores them (which will likely change between runs
of the same script).

This option is useful if you want the same data structure to be encoded as
the same JSON string (given the same overall settings). If it is disabled,
the same hash migh be encoded differently even if contains the same data,
as key-value pairs have no inherent ordering in Perl.

This setting has no effect when decoding JSON strings.

=item $json = $json->allow_nonref ([$enable])

If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method can convert a
non-reference into its corresponding string, number or null JSON value,
which is an extension to RFC4627. Likewise, C<decode> will accept those JSON
values instead of croaking.

If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will croak if it isn't
passed an arrayref or hashref, as JSON strings must either be an object
or array. Likewise, C<decode> will croak if given something that is not a
JSON object or array.

=item $json = $json->shrink ([$enable])

Perl usually over-allocates memory a bit when allocating space for
strings.  This flag optionally resizes strings generated by either
C<encode> or C<decode> to their minimum size possible. This can save
memory when your JSON strings are either very very long or you have many
short strings. It will also try to downgrade any strings to octet-form
if possible: perl stores strings internally either in an encoding called
UTF-X or in octet-form. The latter cannot store everything but uses less
space in general.

If C<$enable> is true (or missing), the string returned by C<encode> will be shrunk-to-fit,
while all strings generated by C<decode> will also be shrunk-to-fit.

If C<$enable> is false, then the normal perl allocation algorithms are used.
If you work with your data, then this is likely to be faster.

In the future, this setting might control other things, such as converting
strings that look like integers or floats into integers or floats
internally (there is no difference on the Perl level), saving space.

=item $json_string = $json->encode ($perl_scalar)

Converts the given Perl data structure (a simple scalar or a reference
to a hash or array) to its JSON representation. Simple scalars will be
converted into JSON string or number sequences, while references to arrays
become JSON arrays and references to hashes become JSON objects. Undefined
Perl values (e.g. C<undef>) become JSON C<null> values. Neither C<true>
nor C<false> values will be generated.

=item $perl_scalar = $json->decode ($json_string)

The opposite of C<encode>: expects a JSON string and tries to parse it,
returning the resulting simple scalar or reference. Croaks on error.

JSON numbers and strings become simple Perl scalars. JSON arrays become
Perl arrayrefs and JSON objects become Perl hashrefs. C<true> becomes
C<1>, C<false> becomes C<0> and C<null> becomes C<undef>.

=back

=head1 MAPPING

This section describes how JSON::XS maps Perl values to JSON values and
vice versa. These mappings are designed to "do the right thing" in most
circumstances automatically, preserving round-tripping characteristics
(what you put in comes out as something equivalent).

For the more enlightened: note that in the following descriptions,
lowercase I<perl> refers to the Perl interpreter, while uppcercase I<Perl>
refers to the abstract Perl language itself.

=head2 JSON -> PERL

=over 4

=item object

A JSON object becomes a reference to a hash in Perl. No ordering of object
keys is preserved.

=item array

A JSON array becomes a reference to an array in Perl.

=item string

A JSON string becomes a string scalar in Perl - Unicode codepoints in JSON
are represented by the same codepoints in the Perl string, so no manual
decoding is necessary.

=item number

A JSON number becomes either an integer or numeric (floating point)
scalar in perl, depending on its range and any fractional parts. On the
Perl level, there is no difference between those as Perl handles all the
conversion details, but an integer may take slightly less memory and might
represent more values exactly than (floating point) numbers.

=item true, false

These JSON atoms become C<0>, C<1>, respectively. Information is lost in
this process. Future versions might represent those values differently,
but they will be guarenteed to act like these integers would normally in
Perl.

=item null

A JSON null atom becomes C<undef> in Perl.

=back

=head2 PERL -> JSON

The mapping from Perl to JSON is slightly more difficult, as Perl is a
truly typeless language, so we can only guess which JSON type is meant by
a Perl value.

=over 4

=item hash references

Perl hash references become JSON objects. As there is no inherent ordering
in hash keys, they will usually be encoded in a pseudo-random order that
can change between runs of the same program but stays generally the same
within the single run of a program. JSON::XS can optionally sort the hash
keys (determined by the I<canonical> flag), so the same datastructure
will serialise to the same JSON text (given same settings and version of
JSON::XS), but this incurs a runtime overhead.

=item array references

Perl array references become JSON arrays.

=item blessed objects

Blessed objects are not allowed. JSON::XS currently tries to encode their
underlying representation (hash- or arrayref), but this behaviour might
change in future versions.

=item simple scalars

Simple Perl scalars (any scalar that is not a reference) are the most
difficult objects to encode: JSON::XS will encode undefined scalars as
JSON null value, scalars that have last been used in a string context
before encoding as JSON strings and anything else as number value:

   # dump as number
   to_json [2]                      # yields [2]
   to_json [-3.0e17]                # yields [-3e+17]
   my $value = 5; to_json [$value]  # yields [5]

   # used as string, so dump as string
   print $value;
   to_json [$value]                 # yields ["5"]

   # undef becomes null
   to_json [undef]                  # yields [null]

You can force the type to be a string by stringifying it:

   my $x = 3.1; # some variable containing a number
   "$x";        # stringified
   $x .= "";    # another, more awkward way to stringify
   print $x;    # perl does it for you, too, quite often

You can force the type to be a number by numifying it:

   my $x = "3"; # some variable containing a string
   $x += 0;     # numify it, ensuring it will be dumped as a number
   $x *= 1;     # same thing, the choise is yours.

You can not currently output JSON booleans or force the type in other,
less obscure, ways. Tell me if you need this capability.

=back

=head1 COMPARISON

As already mentioned, this module was created because none of the existing
JSON modules could be made to work correctly. First I will describe the
problems (or pleasures) I encountered with various existing JSON modules,
followed by some benchmark values. JSON::XS was designed not to suffer
from any of these problems or limitations.

=over 4

=item JSON 1.07

Slow (but very portable, as it is written in pure Perl).

Undocumented/buggy Unicode handling (how JSON handles unicode values is
undocumented. One can get far by feeding it unicode strings and doing
en-/decoding oneself, but unicode escapes are not working properly).

No roundtripping (strings get clobbered if they look like numbers, e.g.
the string C<2.0> will encode to C<2.0> instead of C<"2.0">, and that will
decode into the number 2.

=item JSON::PC 0.01

Very fast.

Undocumented/buggy Unicode handling.

No roundtripping.

Has problems handling many Perl values (e.g. regex results and other magic
values will make it croak).

Does not even generate valid JSON (C<{1,2}> gets converted to C<{1:2}>
which is not a valid JSON string.

Unmaintained (maintainer unresponsive for many months, bugs are not
getting fixed).

=item JSON::Syck 0.21

Very buggy (often crashes).

Very inflexible (no human-readable format supported, format pretty much
undocumented. I need at least a format for easy reading by humans and a
single-line compact format for use in a protocol, and preferably a way to
generate ASCII-only JSON strings).

Completely broken (and confusingly documented) Unicode handling (unicode
escapes are not working properly, you need to set ImplicitUnicode to
I<different> values on en- and decoding to get symmetric behaviour).

No roundtripping (simple cases work, but this depends on wether the scalar
value was used in a numeric context or not).

Dumping hashes may skip hash values depending on iterator state.

Unmaintained (maintainer unresponsive for many months, bugs are not
getting fixed).

Does not check input for validity (i.e. will accept non-JSON input and
return "something" instead of raising an exception. This is a security
issue: imagine two banks transfering money between each other using
JSON. One bank might parse a given non-JSON request and deduct money,
while the other might reject the transaction with a syntax error. While a
good protocol will at least recover, that is extra unnecessary work and
the transaction will still not succeed).

=item JSON::DWIW 0.04

Very fast. Very natural. Very nice.

Undocumented unicode handling (but the best of the pack. Unicode escapes
still don't get parsed properly).

Very inflexible.

No roundtripping.

Does not generate valid JSON (key strings are often unquoted, empty keys
result in nothing being output)

Does not check input for validity.

=back

=head2 SPEED

It seems that JSON::XS is surprisingly fast, as shown in the following
tables. They have been generated with the help of the C<eg/bench> program
in the JSON::XS distribution, to make it easy to compare on your own
system.

First is a comparison between various modules using a very simple JSON
string, showing the number of encodes/decodes per second (JSON::XS is
the functional interface, while JSON::XS/2 is the OO interface with
pretty-printing and hashkey sorting enabled).

   module     |     encode |     decode |
   -----------|------------|------------|
   JSON       |      14006 |       6820 |
   JSON::DWIW |     200937 |     120386 |
   JSON::PC   |      85065 |     129366 |
   JSON::Syck |      59898 |      44232 |
   JSON::XS   |    1171478 |     342435 |
   JSON::XS/2 |     730760 |     328714 |
   -----------+------------+------------+

That is, JSON::XS is 6 times faster than than JSON::DWIW and about 80
times faster than JSON, even with pretty-printing and key sorting.

Using a longer test string (roughly 8KB, generated from Yahoo! Locals
search API (http://nanoref.com/yahooapis/mgPdGg):

   module     |     encode |     decode |
   -----------|------------|------------|
   JSON       |        673 |         38 |
   JSON::DWIW |       5271 |        770 |
   JSON::PC   |       9901 |       2491 |
   JSON::Syck |       2360 |        786 |
   JSON::XS   |      37398 |       3202 |
   JSON::XS/2 |      13765 |       3153 |
   -----------+------------+------------+

Again, JSON::XS leads by far in the encoding case, while still beating
every other module in the decoding case.

Last example is an almost 8MB large hash with many large binary values
(PNG files), resulting in a lot of escaping:

=head1 BUGS

While the goal of this module is to be correct, that unfortunately does
not mean its bug-free, only that I think its design is bug-free. It is
still very young and not well-tested. If you keep reporting bugs they will
be fixed swiftly, though.

=cut

1;

=head1 AUTHOR

 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
 http://home.schmorp.de/

=cut

Revision:	1.10
Committed:	Fri Mar 23 17:40:29 2007 UTC (19 years, 5 months ago) by root
Branch:	MAIN
Changes since 1.9:	+131 -9 lines
Log Message:	* empty log message *
#	User	Rev	Content
1	root	1.1	=head1 NAME
2
3			JSON::XS - JSON serialising/deserialising, done correctly and fast
4
5			=head1 SYNOPSIS
6
7			use JSON::XS;
8
9			=head1 DESCRIPTION
10
11	root	1.2	This module converts Perl data structures to JSON and vice versa. Its
12			primary goal is to be I<correct> and its secondary goal is to be
13			I<fast>. To reach the latter goal it was written in C.
14
15			As this is the n-th-something JSON module on CPAN, what was the reason
16			to write yet another JSON module? While it seems there are many JSON
17			modules, none of them correctly handle all corner cases, and in most cases
18			their maintainers are unresponsive, gone missing, or not listening to bug
19			reports for other reasons.
20
21			See COMPARISON, below, for a comparison to some other JSON modules.
22
23	root	1.10	See MAPPING, below, on how JSON::XS maps perl values to JSON values and
24			vice versa.
25
26	root	1.2	=head2 FEATURES
27
28	root	1.1	=over 4
29
30	root	1.2	=item * correct handling of unicode issues
31
32	root	1.10	This module knows how to handle Unicode, and even documents how and when
33			it does so.
34	root	1.2
35			=item * round-trip integrity
36
37			When you serialise a perl data structure using only datatypes supported
38			by JSON, the deserialised data structure is identical on the Perl level.
39			(e.g. the string "2.0" doesn't suddenly become "2").
40
41			=item * strict checking of JSON correctness
42
43			There is no guessing, no generating of illegal JSON strings by default,
44	root	1.10	and only JSON is accepted as input by default (the latter is a security
45			feature).
46	root	1.2
47			=item * fast
48
49	root	1.10	Compared to other JSON modules, this module compares favourably in terms
50			of speed, too.
51	root	1.2
52			=item * simple to use
53
54			This module has both a simple functional interface as well as an OO
55			interface.
56
57			=item * reasonably versatile output formats
58
59	root	1.10	You can choose between the most compact guarenteed single-line format
60			possible (nice for simple line-based protocols), a pure-ascii format (for
61			when your transport is not 8-bit clean), or a pretty-printed format (for
62			when you want to read that stuff). Or you can combine those features in
63	root	1.2	whatever way you like.
64
65			=back
66
67	root	1.1	=cut
68
69			package JSON::XS;
70
71			BEGIN {
72	root	1.9	$VERSION = '0.3';
73	root	1.1	@ISA = qw(Exporter);
74
75	root	1.2	@EXPORT = qw(to_json from_json);
76	root	1.1	require Exporter;
77
78			require XSLoader;
79			XSLoader::load JSON::XS::, $VERSION;
80			}
81
82	root	1.2	=head1 FUNCTIONAL INTERFACE
83
84			The following convinience methods are provided by this module. They are
85			exported by default:
86
87			=over 4
88
89			=item $json_string = to_json $perl_scalar
90
91			Converts the given Perl data structure (a simple scalar or a reference to
92			a hash or array) to a UTF-8 encoded, binary string (that is, the string contains
93			octets only). Croaks on error.
94
95	root	1.10	This function call is functionally identical to C<< JSON::XS->new->utf8->encode ($perl_scalar) >>.
96	root	1.2
97			=item $perl_scalar = from_json $json_string
98
99			The opposite of C<to_json>: expects an UTF-8 (binary) string and tries to
100			parse that as an UTF-8 encoded JSON string, returning the resulting simple
101			scalar or reference. Croaks on error.
102
103	root	1.10	This function call is functionally identical to C<< JSON::XS->new->utf8->decode ($json_string) >>.
104	root	1.2
105			=back
106
107			=head1 OBJECT-ORIENTED INTERFACE
108
109			The object oriented interface lets you configure your own encoding or
110			decoding style, within the limits of supported formats.
111
112			=over 4
113
114			=item $json = new JSON::XS
115
116			Creates a new JSON::XS object that can be used to de/encode JSON
117			strings. All boolean flags described below are by default I<disabled>.
118	root	1.1
119	root	1.2	The mutators for flags all return the JSON object again and thus calls can
120			be chained:
121
122	root	1.3	my $json = JSON::XS->new->utf8(1)->space_after(1)->encode ({a => [1,2]})
123			=> {"a": [1, 2]}
124	root	1.2
125	root	1.7	=item $json = $json->ascii ([$enable])
126	root	1.2
127	root	1.7	If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will
128			not generate characters outside the code range C<0..127>. Any unicode
129			characters outside that range will be escaped using either a single
130			\uXXXX (BMP characters) or a double \uHHHH\uLLLLL escape sequence, as per
131			RFC4627.
132	root	1.2
133			If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not escape Unicode
134			characters unless necessary.
135
136	root	1.3	JSON::XS->new->ascii (1)->encode (chr 0x10401)
137			=> \ud801\udc01
138
139	root	1.7	=item $json = $json->utf8 ([$enable])
140	root	1.2
141	root	1.7	If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will encode
142			the JSON string into UTF-8, as required by many protocols, while the
143			C<decode> method expects to be handled an UTF-8-encoded string. Please
144			note that UTF-8-encoded strings do not contain any characters outside the
145			range C<0..255>, they are thus useful for bytewise/binary I/O.
146	root	1.2
147			If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will return the JSON
148			string as a (non-encoded) unicode string, while C<decode> expects thus a
149			unicode string. Any decoding or encoding (e.g. to UTF-8 or UTF-16) needs
150			to be done yourself, e.g. using the Encode module.
151
152	root	1.7	=item $json = $json->pretty ([$enable])
153	root	1.2
154			This enables (or disables) all of the C<indent>, C<space_before> and
155	root	1.3	C<space_after> (and in the future possibly more) flags in one call to
156	root	1.2	generate the most readable (or most compact) form possible.
157
158	root	1.3	my $json = JSON::XS->new->pretty(1)->encode ({a => [1,2]})
159			=>
160			{
161			"a" : [
162			1,
163			2
164			]
165			}
166
167	root	1.7	=item $json = $json->indent ([$enable])
168	root	1.2
169	root	1.7	If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will use a multiline
170	root	1.2	format as output, putting every array member or object/hash key-value pair
171			into its own line, identing them properly.
172
173			If C<$enable> is false, no newlines or indenting will be produced, and the
174			resulting JSON strings is guarenteed not to contain any C<newlines>.
175
176			This setting has no effect when decoding JSON strings.
177
178	root	1.7	=item $json = $json->space_before ([$enable])
179	root	1.2
180	root	1.7	If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will add an extra
181	root	1.2	optional space before the C<:> separating keys from values in JSON objects.
182
183			If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not add any extra
184			space at those places.
185
186			This setting has no effect when decoding JSON strings. You will also most
187			likely combine this setting with C<space_after>.
188
189	root	1.7	=item $json = $json->space_after ([$enable])
190	root	1.2
191	root	1.7	If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will add an extra
192	root	1.2	optional space after the C<:> separating keys from values in JSON objects
193			and extra whitespace after the C<,> separating key-value pairs and array
194			members.
195
196			If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will not add any extra
197			space at those places.
198
199			This setting has no effect when decoding JSON strings.
200
201	root	1.7	=item $json = $json->canonical ([$enable])
202	root	1.2
203	root	1.7	If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method will output JSON objects
204	root	1.2	by sorting their keys. This is adding a comparatively high overhead.
205
206			If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will output key-value
207			pairs in the order Perl stores them (which will likely change between runs
208			of the same script).
209
210			This option is useful if you want the same data structure to be encoded as
211			the same JSON string (given the same overall settings). If it is disabled,
212			the same hash migh be encoded differently even if contains the same data,
213			as key-value pairs have no inherent ordering in Perl.
214
215			This setting has no effect when decoding JSON strings.
216
217	root	1.7	=item $json = $json->allow_nonref ([$enable])
218	root	1.3
219	root	1.7	If C<$enable> is true (or missing), then the C<encode> method can convert a
220	root	1.3	non-reference into its corresponding string, number or null JSON value,
221			which is an extension to RFC4627. Likewise, C<decode> will accept those JSON
222			values instead of croaking.
223
224			If C<$enable> is false, then the C<encode> method will croak if it isn't
225			passed an arrayref or hashref, as JSON strings must either be an object
226			or array. Likewise, C<decode> will croak if given something that is not a
227			JSON object or array.
228
229	root	1.7	=item $json = $json->shrink ([$enable])
230
231			Perl usually over-allocates memory a bit when allocating space for
232			strings. This flag optionally resizes strings generated by either
233			C<encode> or C<decode> to their minimum size possible. This can save
234			memory when your JSON strings are either very very long or you have many
235	root	1.8	short strings. It will also try to downgrade any strings to octet-form
236			if possible: perl stores strings internally either in an encoding called
237			UTF-X or in octet-form. The latter cannot store everything but uses less
238			space in general.
239	root	1.7
240			If C<$enable> is true (or missing), the string returned by C<encode> will be shrunk-to-fit,
241			while all strings generated by C<decode> will also be shrunk-to-fit.
242
243			If C<$enable> is false, then the normal perl allocation algorithms are used.
244			If you work with your data, then this is likely to be faster.
245
246			In the future, this setting might control other things, such as converting
247			strings that look like integers or floats into integers or floats
248			internally (there is no difference on the Perl level), saving space.
249
250	root	1.2	=item $json_string = $json->encode ($perl_scalar)
251
252			Converts the given Perl data structure (a simple scalar or a reference
253			to a hash or array) to its JSON representation. Simple scalars will be
254			converted into JSON string or number sequences, while references to arrays
255			become JSON arrays and references to hashes become JSON objects. Undefined
256			Perl values (e.g. C<undef>) become JSON C<null> values. Neither C<true>
257			nor C<false> values will be generated.
258	root	1.1
259	root	1.2	=item $perl_scalar = $json->decode ($json_string)
260	root	1.1
261	root	1.2	The opposite of C<encode>: expects a JSON string and tries to parse it,
262			returning the resulting simple scalar or reference. Croaks on error.
263	root	1.1
264	root	1.2	JSON numbers and strings become simple Perl scalars. JSON arrays become
265			Perl arrayrefs and JSON objects become Perl hashrefs. C<true> becomes
266			C<1>, C<false> becomes C<0> and C<null> becomes C<undef>.
267	root	1.1
268			=back
269
270	root	1.10	=head1 MAPPING
271
272			This section describes how JSON::XS maps Perl values to JSON values and
273			vice versa. These mappings are designed to "do the right thing" in most
274			circumstances automatically, preserving round-tripping characteristics
275			(what you put in comes out as something equivalent).
276
277			For the more enlightened: note that in the following descriptions,
278			lowercase I<perl> refers to the Perl interpreter, while uppcercase I<Perl>
279			refers to the abstract Perl language itself.
280
281			=head2 JSON -> PERL
282
283			=over 4
284
285			=item object
286
287			A JSON object becomes a reference to a hash in Perl. No ordering of object
288			keys is preserved.
289
290			=item array
291
292			A JSON array becomes a reference to an array in Perl.
293
294			=item string
295
296			A JSON string becomes a string scalar in Perl - Unicode codepoints in JSON
297			are represented by the same codepoints in the Perl string, so no manual
298			decoding is necessary.
299
300			=item number
301
302			A JSON number becomes either an integer or numeric (floating point)
303			scalar in perl, depending on its range and any fractional parts. On the
304			Perl level, there is no difference between those as Perl handles all the
305			conversion details, but an integer may take slightly less memory and might
306			represent more values exactly than (floating point) numbers.
307
308			=item true, false
309
310			These JSON atoms become C<0>, C<1>, respectively. Information is lost in
311			this process. Future versions might represent those values differently,
312			but they will be guarenteed to act like these integers would normally in
313			Perl.
314
315			=item null
316
317			A JSON null atom becomes C<undef> in Perl.
318
319			=back
320
321			=head2 PERL -> JSON
322
323			The mapping from Perl to JSON is slightly more difficult, as Perl is a
324			truly typeless language, so we can only guess which JSON type is meant by
325			a Perl value.
326
327			=over 4
328
329			=item hash references
330
331			Perl hash references become JSON objects. As there is no inherent ordering
332			in hash keys, they will usually be encoded in a pseudo-random order that
333			can change between runs of the same program but stays generally the same
334			within the single run of a program. JSON::XS can optionally sort the hash
335			keys (determined by the I<canonical> flag), so the same datastructure
336			will serialise to the same JSON text (given same settings and version of
337			JSON::XS), but this incurs a runtime overhead.
338
339			=item array references
340
341			Perl array references become JSON arrays.
342
343			=item blessed objects
344
345			Blessed objects are not allowed. JSON::XS currently tries to encode their
346			underlying representation (hash- or arrayref), but this behaviour might
347			change in future versions.
348
349			=item simple scalars
350
351			Simple Perl scalars (any scalar that is not a reference) are the most
352			difficult objects to encode: JSON::XS will encode undefined scalars as
353			JSON null value, scalars that have last been used in a string context
354			before encoding as JSON strings and anything else as number value:
355
356			# dump as number
357			to_json [2] # yields [2]
358			to_json [-3.0e17] # yields [-3e+17]
359			my $value = 5; to_json [$value] # yields [5]
360
361			# used as string, so dump as string
362			print $value;
363			to_json [$value] # yields ["5"]
364
365			# undef becomes null
366			to_json [undef] # yields [null]
367
368			You can force the type to be a string by stringifying it:
369
370			my $x = 3.1; # some variable containing a number
371			"$x"; # stringified
372			$x .= ""; # another, more awkward way to stringify
373			print $x; # perl does it for you, too, quite often
374
375			You can force the type to be a number by numifying it:
376
377			my $x = "3"; # some variable containing a string
378			$x += 0; # numify it, ensuring it will be dumped as a number
379			$x *= 1; # same thing, the choise is yours.
380
381			You can not currently output JSON booleans or force the type in other,
382			less obscure, ways. Tell me if you need this capability.
383
384			=back
385
386	root	1.3	=head1 COMPARISON
387
388			As already mentioned, this module was created because none of the existing
389			JSON modules could be made to work correctly. First I will describe the
390			problems (or pleasures) I encountered with various existing JSON modules,
391	root	1.4	followed by some benchmark values. JSON::XS was designed not to suffer
392			from any of these problems or limitations.
393	root	1.3
394			=over 4
395
396	root	1.5	=item JSON 1.07
397	root	1.3
398			Slow (but very portable, as it is written in pure Perl).
399
400			Undocumented/buggy Unicode handling (how JSON handles unicode values is
401			undocumented. One can get far by feeding it unicode strings and doing
402			en-/decoding oneself, but unicode escapes are not working properly).
403
404			No roundtripping (strings get clobbered if they look like numbers, e.g.
405			the string C<2.0> will encode to C<2.0> instead of C<"2.0">, and that will
406			decode into the number 2.
407
408	root	1.5	=item JSON::PC 0.01
409	root	1.3
410			Very fast.
411
412			Undocumented/buggy Unicode handling.
413
414			No roundtripping.
415
416	root	1.4	Has problems handling many Perl values (e.g. regex results and other magic
417			values will make it croak).
418	root	1.3
419			Does not even generate valid JSON (C<{1,2}> gets converted to C<{1:2}>
420			which is not a valid JSON string.
421
422			Unmaintained (maintainer unresponsive for many months, bugs are not
423			getting fixed).
424
425	root	1.5	=item JSON::Syck 0.21
426	root	1.3
427			Very buggy (often crashes).
428
429	root	1.4	Very inflexible (no human-readable format supported, format pretty much
430			undocumented. I need at least a format for easy reading by humans and a
431			single-line compact format for use in a protocol, and preferably a way to
432			generate ASCII-only JSON strings).
433	root	1.3
434			Completely broken (and confusingly documented) Unicode handling (unicode
435			escapes are not working properly, you need to set ImplicitUnicode to
436			I<different> values on en- and decoding to get symmetric behaviour).
437
438			No roundtripping (simple cases work, but this depends on wether the scalar
439			value was used in a numeric context or not).
440
441			Dumping hashes may skip hash values depending on iterator state.
442
443			Unmaintained (maintainer unresponsive for many months, bugs are not
444			getting fixed).
445
446			Does not check input for validity (i.e. will accept non-JSON input and
447			return "something" instead of raising an exception. This is a security
448			issue: imagine two banks transfering money between each other using
449			JSON. One bank might parse a given non-JSON request and deduct money,
450			while the other might reject the transaction with a syntax error. While a
451			good protocol will at least recover, that is extra unnecessary work and
452			the transaction will still not succeed).
453
454	root	1.5	=item JSON::DWIW 0.04
455	root	1.3
456			Very fast. Very natural. Very nice.
457
458			Undocumented unicode handling (but the best of the pack. Unicode escapes
459			still don't get parsed properly).
460
461			Very inflexible.
462
463			No roundtripping.
464
465	root	1.4	Does not generate valid JSON (key strings are often unquoted, empty keys
466			result in nothing being output)
467
468	root	1.3	Does not check input for validity.
469
470			=back
471
472			=head2 SPEED
473
474	root	1.4	It seems that JSON::XS is surprisingly fast, as shown in the following
475			tables. They have been generated with the help of the C<eg/bench> program
476			in the JSON::XS distribution, to make it easy to compare on your own
477			system.
478
479			First is a comparison between various modules using a very simple JSON
480			string, showing the number of encodes/decodes per second (JSON::XS is
481			the functional interface, while JSON::XS/2 is the OO interface with
482			pretty-printing and hashkey sorting enabled).
483
484			module \| encode \| decode \|
485			-----------\|------------\|------------\|
486			JSON \| 14006 \| 6820 \|
487			JSON::DWIW \| 200937 \| 120386 \|
488			JSON::PC \| 85065 \| 129366 \|
489			JSON::Syck \| 59898 \| 44232 \|
490			JSON::XS \| 1171478 \| 342435 \|
491			JSON::XS/2 \| 730760 \| 328714 \|
492			-----------+------------+------------+
493
494			That is, JSON::XS is 6 times faster than than JSON::DWIW and about 80
495			times faster than JSON, even with pretty-printing and key sorting.
496
497			Using a longer test string (roughly 8KB, generated from Yahoo! Locals
498			search API (http://nanoref.com/yahooapis/mgPdGg):
499
500			module \| encode \| decode \|
501			-----------\|------------\|------------\|
502			JSON \| 673 \| 38 \|
503			JSON::DWIW \| 5271 \| 770 \|
504			JSON::PC \| 9901 \| 2491 \|
505			JSON::Syck \| 2360 \| 786 \|
506			JSON::XS \| 37398 \| 3202 \|
507			JSON::XS/2 \| 13765 \| 3153 \|
508			-----------+------------+------------+
509
510			Again, JSON::XS leads by far in the encoding case, while still beating
511			every other module in the decoding case.
512
513			Last example is an almost 8MB large hash with many large binary values
514			(PNG files), resulting in a lot of escaping:
515
516			=head1 BUGS
517
518			While the goal of this module is to be correct, that unfortunately does
519			not mean its bug-free, only that I think its design is bug-free. It is
520			still very young and not well-tested. If you keep reporting bugs they will
521			be fixed swiftly, though.
522
523	root	1.2	=cut
524
525			1;
526
527	root	1.1	=head1 AUTHOR
528
529			Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
530			http://home.schmorp.de/
531
532			=cut
533