JSON::XS - JSON serialising/deserialising, done correctly and fast
use JSON::XS;
This module converts Perl data structures to JSON and vice versa. Its primary goal is to be correct and its secondary goal is to be 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.
correct handling of unicode issues
This module knows how to handle Unicode, and even documents how it does so.
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").
strict checking of JSON correctness
There is no guessing, no generating of illegal JSON strings by default, and only JSON is accepted as input (the latter is a security feature).
fast
compared to other JSON modules, this module compares favourably.
simple to use
This module has both a simple functional interface as well as an OO interface.
reasonably versatile output formats
You can choose between the most compact format possible, a pure-ascii format, or a pretty-printed format. Or you can combine those features in whatever way you like.
The following convinience methods are provided by this module. They are exported by default:
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 JSON::XS->new->utf8 (1)->encode ($perl_scalar).
JSON::XS->new->utf8 (1)->encode ($perl_scalar)
The opposite of 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.
to_json
This function call is functionally identical to JSON::XS->new->utf8 (1)->decode ($json_string).
JSON::XS->new->utf8 (1)->decode ($json_string)
The object oriented interface lets you configure your own encoding or decoding style, within the limits of supported formats.
Creates a new JSON::XS object that can be used to de/encode JSON strings. All boolean flags described below are by default 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]}
If $enable is true, then the encode method will not generate characters outside the code range 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.
$enable
encode
0..127
If $enable is false, then the encode method will not escape Unicode characters unless necessary.
JSON::XS->new->ascii (1)->encode (chr 0x10401) => \ud801\udc01
If $enable is true, then the encode method will encode the JSON string into UTF-8, as required by many protocols, while the 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 0..255, they are thus useful for bytewise/binary I/O.
decode
0..255
If $enable is false, then the encode method will return the JSON string as a (non-encoded) unicode string, while 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.
This enables (or disables) all of the indent, space_before and space_after (and in the future possibly more) flags in one call to generate the most readable (or most compact) form possible.
indent
space_before
space_after
my $json = JSON::XS->new->pretty(1)->encode ({a => [1,2]}) => { "a" : [ 1, 2 ] }
If $enable is true, then the 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 $enable is false, no newlines or indenting will be produced, and the resulting JSON strings is guarenteed not to contain any newlines.
newlines
This setting has no effect when decoding JSON strings.
If $enable is true, then the encode method will add an extra optional space before the : separating keys from values in JSON objects.
:
If $enable is false, then the 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 space_after.
If $enable is true, then the encode method will add an extra optional space after the : separating keys from values in JSON objects and extra whitespace after the , separating key-value pairs and array members.
,
If $enable is true, then the encode method will output JSON objects by sorting their keys. This is adding a comparatively high overhead.
If $enable is false, then the 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.
If $enable is true, then the encode method can convert a non-reference into its corresponding string, number or null JSON value, which is an extension to RFC4627. Likewise, decode will accept those JSON values instead of croaking.
If $enable is false, then the encode method will croak if it isn't passed an arrayref or hashref, as JSON strings must either be an object or array. Likewise, decode will croak if given something that is not a JSON object or array.
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. undef) become JSON null values. Neither true nor false values will be generated.
undef
null
true
false
The opposite of 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. true becomes 1, false becomes 0 and null becomes undef.
1
0
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.
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 2.0 will encode to 2.0 instead of "2.0", and that will decode into the number 2.
2.0
"2.0"
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 ({1,2} gets converted to {1:2} which is not a valid JSON string.
{1,2}
{1:2}
Unmaintained (maintainer unresponsive for many months, bugs are not getting fixed).
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 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.
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).
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.
Does not generate valid JSON (key strings are often unquoted, empty keys result in nothing being output)
Does not check input for validity.
It seems that JSON::XS is surprisingly fast, as shown in the following tables. They have been generated with the help of the eg/bench program in the JSON::XS distribution, to make it easy to compare on your own system.
eg/bench
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:
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.
Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de> http://home.schmorp.de/
To install JSON::XS, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm JSON::XS
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install JSON::XS
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.