jsonez

The easy JSON library for C/C++.

How does it work?

This is a single header file library. Just drop the file in, include it in your project, #define JSONEZ_IMPLEMENTATION in exactly ONE file, and you are good to go.

// i.e. it should look like this:
#include ...
#include ...
#define JSONEZ_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "jsonez.h"

Who is this library for?

This is an "easy" library, so there are not a lot of features, there are zero classes and objects, and you probably don't want to use this in super-secret code because it favors simplicity over security. If you need a full-featured robust, hardened business JSON parser for thousands of servers, you are in the wrong place.

However, if you have some C/C++ code, and you want to parse/save some JSON files, and you just want some code that works, you have come to the right place.

Does this code follow the JSON language specification?

Hell no! Why would you want to do that? While I like the idea of JSON, the fact is that I'm too lazy to put all the keys in "quotes", I don't care about commas at the end of lists, I like my JSON to look like Javascript and/or Lua, and I really want comments in some of my config files.

Valid JSON is still valid:

{
  "key": "value",
  "table": {
    "array": [1,2,3]
  },
  "something else": false
}

But you can also leave out the surrounding curly braces if you are lazy.

"key": "value",
"table": {
  "array": [1,2,3]
},
"something else": false

It's okay to have a comma at the end of a list. (I won't tell):

"key": "value",
"table": {
  "array": [1,2,3,],
},
"something else": false,

If your keys have no spaces or special characters, you don't even need quotes. You do always need quotes for string values however.

lazyAmI: "keys without quotes",
because: 42,
ofReasons: 1.234,

This parser lets you have single and multiple line comments, because sometimes you need them.

{
  // this is the root object
  root: {
    name: "bill", // name
    size: 12, // why 12?
    dead: false
  },
  /*
   * This ID really needs to be generated,
   * but we can do that later too.
   */
   id: 420,
}

And if you really don't like the colon separator you can use an equal sign:

{
  root = {
    name = "bill",
    size = 12,
    dead = false,
  },
  array = [{
    item = 1,
    id = 22,
  }, {
    item = 2,
    id = 33  
  }]
}

At this point, you may notice that this "JSON" parser really parses JSON, Javascript, and Lua. (Shhhhh. Don't tell those fancy parsers. They may get jealous).

O.K. but how easy is it really?

Here is the code to parse a string once you have loaded it into your program:

char *json_file = load_your_file();
jsonzez *json = jsonez_parse(json_file);

// do your json stuff here

jsonez_free(json);

Really? Yep. That's it. What if you have a JSON object and you want to write it to a file?

jsonez* your_object = create_your_object(); // we cover this later
char *string = jsonez_to_string(your_object);
write_to_file(string);
free(string);
jsonez_free(your_object);