Ultralightweight JSON parser in ANSI C.
MIT License
Copyright (c) 2009-2017 Dave Gamble and cJSON contributors
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cJSON aims to be the dumbest possible parser that you can get your job done with. It's a single file of C, and a single header file.
JSON is described best here: http://www.json.org/ It's like XML, but fat-free. You use it to move data around, store things, or just generally represent your program's state.
As a library, cJSON exists to take away as much legwork as it can, but not get in your way. As a point of pragmatism (i.e. ignoring the truth), I'm going to say that you can use it in one of two modes: Auto and Manual. Let's have a quick run-through.
I lifted some JSON from this page: http://www.json.org/fatfree.html That page inspired me to write cJSON, which is a parser that tries to share the same philosophy as JSON itself. Simple, dumb, out of the way.
There are several ways to incorporate cJSON into your project.
Because the entire library is only one C file and one header file, you can just copy cJSON.h
and cJSON.c
to your projects source and start using it.
cJSON is written in ANSI C (C89) in order to support as many platforms and compilers as possible.
With CMake, cJSON supports a full blown build system. This way you get the most features. CMake with an equal or higher version than 2.8.5 is supported. With CMake it is recommended to do an out of tree build, meaning the compiled files are put in a directory separate from the source files. So in order to build cJSON with CMake on a Unix platform, make a build
directory and run CMake inside it.
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
This will create a Makefile and a bunch of other files. You can then compile it:
make
And install it with make install
if you want. By default it installs the headers /usr/local/include/cjson
and the libraries to /usr/local/lib
. It also installs files for pkg-config to make it easier to detect and use an existing installation of CMake. And it installs CMake config files, that can be used by other CMake based projects to discover the library.
You can change the build process with a list of different options that you can pass to CMake. Turn them on with On
and off with Off
:
-DENABLE_CJSON_TEST=On
: Enable building the tests. (on by default)-DENABLE_CJSON_UTILS=On
: Enable building cJSON_Utils. (off by default)-DENABLE_TARGET_EXPORT=On
: Enable the export of CMake targets. Turn off if it makes problems. (on by default)-DENABLE_CUSTOM_COMPILER_FLAGS=On
: Enable custom compiler flags (currently for Clang and GCC). Turn off if it makes problems. (on by default)-DENABLE_VALGRIND=On
: Run tests with valgrind. (off by default)-DENABLE_SANITIZERS=On
: Compile cJSON with AddressSanitizer and UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer enabled (if possible). (off by default)-DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=On
: Build the shared libraries. (on by default)-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr
: Set a prefix for the installation.
If you are packaging cJSON for a distribution of Linux, you would probably take these steps for example:
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DENABLE_CJSON_UTILS=On -DENABLE_CJSON_TEST=Off -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr
make
make DESTDIR=$pkgdir install
If you don't have CMake available, but still have GNU make. You can use the makefile to build cJSON:
Run this command in the directory with the source code and it will automatically compile static and shared libraries and a little test program.
make all
If you want, you can install the compiled library to your system using make install
. By default it will install the headers in /usr/local/include/cjson
and the libraries in /usr/local/lib
. But you can change this behavior by setting the PREFIX
and DESTDIR
variables: make PREFIX=/usr DESTDIR=temp install
.
{
"name": "Jack (\"Bee\") Nimble",
"format": {
"type": "rect",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1080,
"interlace": false,
"frame rate": 24
}
}
Assume that you got this from a file, a webserver, or magic JSON elves, whatever,
you have a char *
to it. Everything is a cJSON
struct.
Get it parsed:
cJSON * root = cJSON_Parse(my_json_string);
This is an object. We're in C. We don't have objects. But we do have structs. What's the framerate?
cJSON *format = cJSON_GetObjectItemCaseSensitive(root, "format");
cJSON *framerate_item = cJSON_GetObjectItemCaseSensitive(format, "frame rate");
double framerate = 0;
if (cJSON_IsNumber(framerate_item))
{
framerate = framerate_item->valuedouble;
}
Want to change the framerate?
cJSON *framerate_item = cJSON_GetObjectItemCaseSensitive(format, "frame rate");
cJSON_SetNumberValue(framerate_item, 25);
Back to disk?
char *rendered = cJSON_Print(root);
Finished? Delete the root (this takes care of everything else).
cJSON_Delete(root);
That's AUTO mode. If you're going to use Auto mode, you really ought to check pointers before you dereference them. If you want to see how you'd build this struct in code?
cJSON *root;
cJSON *fmt;
root = cJSON_CreateObject();
cJSON_AddItemToObject(root, "name", cJSON_CreateString("Jack (\"Bee\") Nimble"));
cJSON_AddItemToObject(root, "format", fmt = cJSON_CreateObject());
cJSON_AddStringToObject(fmt, "type", "rect");
cJSON_AddNumberToObject(fmt, "width", 1920);
cJSON_AddNumberToObject(fmt, "height", 1080);
cJSON_AddFalseToObject (fmt, "interlace");
cJSON_AddNumberToObject(fmt, "frame rate", 24);
Hopefully we can agree that's not a lot of code? There's no overhead, no unnecessary setup.
Look at test.c
for a bunch of nice examples, mostly all ripped off the json.org site, and
a few from elsewhere.
What about manual mode? First up you need some detail.
Let's cover how the cJSON
objects represent the JSON data.
cJSON doesn't distinguish arrays from objects in handling; just type.
Each cJSON
has, potentially, a child, siblings, value, a name.
- The
root
object has: Object Type and a Child - The Child has name "name", with value "Jack ("Bee") Nimble", and a sibling:
- Sibling has type Object, name "format", and a child.
- That child has type String, name "type", value "rect", and a sibling:
- Sibling has type Number, name "width", value 1920, and a sibling:
- Sibling has type Number, name "height", value 1080, and a sibling:
- Sibling has type False, name "interlace", and a sibling:
- Sibling has type Number, name "frame rate", value 24
typedef struct cJSON {
struct cJSON *next,*prev;
struct cJSON *child;
int type;
char *valuestring;
int valueint; /* writing to valueint is DEPRECATED, please use cJSON_SetNumberValue instead */
double valuedouble;
char *string;
} cJSON;
By default all values are 0 unless set by virtue of being meaningful.
next
/prev
is a doubly linked list of siblings. next
takes you to your sibling,
prev
takes you back from your sibling to you.
Only objects and arrays have a child
, and it's the head of the doubly linked list.
A child
entry will have prev == 0
, but next potentially points on. The last sibling has next == 0
.
The type expresses Null/True/False/Number/String/Array/Object, all of which are #defined
in
cJSON.h
.
A Number has valueint
and valuedouble
. valueint
is a relict of the past, so always use valuedouble
.
Any entry which is in the linked list which is the child of an object will have a string
which is the "name" of the entry. When I said "name" in the above example, that's string
.
string
is the JSON name for the 'variable name' if you will.
Now you can trivially walk the lists, recursively, and parse as you please.
You can invoke cJSON_Parse
to get cJSON to parse for you, and then you can take
the root object, and traverse the structure (which is, formally, an N-tree),
and tokenise as you please. If you wanted to build a callback style parser, this is how
you'd do it (just an example, since these things are very specific):
void parse_and_callback(cJSON *item, const char *prefix)
{
while (item)
{
char *newprefix = malloc(strlen(prefix) + strlen(item->string) + 2);
sprintf(newprefix, "%s/%s", prefix, item->string);
int dorecurse = callback(newprefix, item->type, item);
if (item->child && dorecurse)
{
parse_and_callback(item->child, newprefix);
}
item = item->next;
free(newprefix);
}
}
The prefix
process will build you a separated list, to simplify your callback handling.
The dorecurse
flag would let the callback decide to handle sub-arrays on it's own, or
let you invoke it per-item. For the item above, your callback might look like this:
int callback(const char *name, int type, cJSON *item)
{
if (!strcmp(name, "name"))
{
/* populate name */
}
else if (!strcmp(name, "format/type"))
{
/* handle "rect" */ }
else if (!strcmp(name, "format/width"))
{
/* 800 */
}
else if (!strcmp(name, "format/height"))
{
/* 600 */
}
else if (!strcmp(name, "format/interlace"))
{
/* false */
}
else if (!strcmp(name, "format/frame rate"))
{
/* 24 */
}
return 1;
}
Alternatively, you might like to parse iteratively. You'd use:
void parse_object(cJSON *item)
{
int i;
for (i = 0; i < cJSON_GetArraySize(item); i++)
{
cJSON *subitem = cJSON_GetArrayItem(item, i);
// handle subitem
}
}
Or, for PROPER manual mode:
void parse_object(cJSON *item)
{
cJSON *subitem = item->child;
while (subitem)
{
// handle subitem
if (subitem->child)
{
parse_object(subitem->child);
}
subitem = subitem->next;
}
}
Of course, this should look familiar, since this is just a stripped-down version of the callback-parser.
This should cover most uses you'll find for parsing. The rest should be possible to infer.. and if in doubt, read the source! There's not a lot of it! ;)
In terms of constructing JSON data, the example code above is the right way to do it. You can, of course, hand your sub-objects to other functions to populate. Also, if you find a use for it, you can manually build the objects. For instance, suppose you wanted to build an array of objects?
cJSON *objects[24];
cJSON *Create_array_of_anything(cJSON **items, int num)
{
int i;
cJSON *prev;
cJSON *root = cJSON_CreateArray();
for (i = 0; i < 24; i++)
{
if (!i)
{
root->child = objects[i];
}
else
{
prev->next = objects[i];
objects[i]->prev = prev;
}
prev = objects[i];
}
return root;
}
and simply: Create_array_of_anything(objects, 24);
cJSON doesn't make any assumptions about what order you create things in. You can attach the objects, as above, and later add children to each of those objects.
As soon as you call cJSON_Print
, it renders the structure to text.
The test.c
code shows how to handle a bunch of typical cases. If you uncomment
the code, it'll load, parse and print a bunch of test files, also from json.org,
which are more complex than I'd care to try and stash into a const char array[]
.
cJSON doesn't support strings that contain the zero character '\0'
or \u0000
. This is impossible with the current API because strings are zero terminated.
cJSON only supports UTF-8 encoded input and will always produce UTF-8 as output (If the input contained invalid UTF-8, it will most likely propagate it through to the output, thereby making the output non-valid UTF-8).
cJSON is written in ANSI C (or C89, C90). If your compiler or C library doesn't follow this standard, correct behavior is not guaranteed.
NOTE: ANSI C is not C++ therefore it shouldn't be compiled by a C++ compiler. You can compile it with a C compiler and link it with your C++ code however. Although compiling with a C++ compiler might work, correct behavior is not guaranteed.
cJSON does not officially support any double
implementations other than IEE754 double precision floating point numbers. It might still work with other implementations but bugs with these will be considered invalid.
The maximum length of a floating point literal that cJSON supports is currently 63 characters.
cJSON doesn't support arrays and objects that are nested too deeply because this would result in a stack overflow. To prevent this cJSON limits the depth to CJSON_NESTING_LIMIT
which is 1000 by default but can be changed at compile time.
In general cJSON is not thread safe.
However it is thread safe under the following conditions:
cJSON_GetErrorPtr
is never used (thereturn_parse_end
parameter ofcJSON_ParseWithOpts
can be used instead)cJSON_InitHooks
is only ever called before using cJSON in any threads.setlocale
is never called before all calls to cJSON functions have returned.
When cJSON was originally created, it didn't follow the JSON standard and didn't make a distinction between uppercase and lowercase letters. If you want the correct, standard compliant, behavior, you need to use the CaseSensitive
functions where available.
- Dave Gamble, Aug 2009