What is xpjson?

• A minimal Xross-Platform JSON read & write library in C++.

Why use xpjson?

• Easy-to-use: it's STL-based, and designed to be used without extra studies.
• Easy-to-assemble: only a tiny header file needs to be included.
• No dependencies: unless STL and std c libraries.
• According to RFC 8259 - The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Data Interchange Format.
• Compatiblities:
  • Encoding-friendly: support popular encodings, like ASCII, UTF8, GBK, GB2312, BIG 5, UTF16, UTF32, UCS-2, UCS-4.
  • OS-friendly: portable for popular platforms, like linux and windows.
  • Compiler-friendly: upward support old version of C++, and forward support for new features.
• High-performance & high-concurrency aimed.
• 100K scenario validated till now in commercial distributed application service.
• Elegant casting between types, like string to integer, string to float, integer to string, and etc.
• NULL in string value supports.
• Every JSON value occupies fixed 16 bytes size under both 32-bit and 64-bit system.

Examples

{
    "orca": {
        "personalities": {
            "age": 28,
            "company": "ez8.co",
            "gender": "male",
            "name": "Zhang Wei"
        },
        "skills": [
            "C++",
            "golang",
            "python"
        ]
    }
}

write example

• You can rapidly start writing by according to following example.

#include "xpjson.hpp"
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
  JSON::Value v;
  v["orca"]["personalities"]["name"] = "Zhang Wei";
  v["orca"]["personalities"]["gender"] = "male";
  v["orca"]["personalities"]["company"] = "ez8.co";
  v["orca"]["skills"][0] = "C++";
  v["orca"]["skills"][1] = "golang";
  v["orca"]["skills"][2] = "python";

  string out;
  v.write(out);

  cout << out << endl;
  return 0;
}

• The output is :

~$ ./xpjson_example1
{"orca":{"personalities":{"age":28,"company":"ez8.co","gender":"male","name":"Zhang Wei"},"skills":["C++","golang","python"]}}

• But it's not a optimized one compared with the following example.

#include "xpjson.hpp"
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
  JSON::Value v;
  JSON::Object& orca = v["orca"].o();

  JSON::Object& personalities = orca["personalities"].o();
  personalities["name"] = "Zhang Wei";
  personalities["gender"] = "male";
  personalities["company"] = "ez8.co";

  JSON::Array& skills = orca["skills"].a();
  skills.reserve(3);
  // You should use resize or push_back for Array, coz it's vector.
  skills.resize(2);
  skills[0] = "C++";
  skills[1] = "golang";

  // Use JSON_MOVE to gain perf opt benefits under C++11 if possible.
  skills.push_back(JSON_MOVE(string("python")));

  string out;
  // reserve 100 bytes, reduce reallocation and copy cost of time
  out.reserve(100);
  v.write(out);

  cout << out << endl;
  return 0;
}

read example

• And you can read the stream by according to following example.

#include "xpjson.hpp"
#include <iostream>
#include <cassert>

int main()
{
  string in("{\"orca\":{\"personalities\":{\"age\":28,\"company\":\"ez8.co\",\"gender\":\"male\",\"name\":\"Zhang Wei\"},\"skills\":[\"C++\",\"golang\",\"python\"]}}");
  JSON::Value v;
  size_t ret = v.read(in);
  assert(ret == in.length());

  JSON::Object& orca = v["orca"].o();
  assert(orca.size() == 2);

  JSON::Object& personalities = orca["personalities"].o();
  JSON::Array& skills = orca["skills"].a();

  cout << "Personalities:" << endl;
  for(JSON::Object::const_iterator it=personalities.begin(); it!=personalities.end(); ++it) {
    string out;
    it->second.to_string(out);
    cout << it->first << " -> " << out << endl;
  }

  cout << endl << "Skills:" << endl;
  for(JSON::Array::const_iterator it=skills.begin(); it!=skills.end(); ++it) {
    cout << it->s() << endl;
  }

  return 0;
}

• The output is :

~$ ./xpjson_example3
Personalities:
age -> 28
company -> ez8.co
gender -> male
name -> Zhang Wei

Skills:
C++
golang
python

Benchmark

• <UNDER CONSTRUCTION>

Performance-purpose Details

• Can skip detection that whether string needs to be encoded or escaped.
  • Enable detecttion as default.
    • Use a flag to skip when put string.
    • Auto set during read if skip is possible.
  • Invalid after modifications (or possible modifications like get reference operation as memory watch is not ready now).
  • Which should not check every character during write and may gain SIMD intrinsics benefits of memxxx APIs (about 30% bonous as benchmark said).
• No useless pretty print (indent, CRLF, space and other formats).
  • Gaudy feature I think, because performance, size of packet and binaries is most important, not low-frequency debug dump.
  • Use online json-validation web or web browser console to show them in pretty formats instead.
  • Less extra conditions (about 10% bonous as benchmark said).
• As less temporary variables and condition branches as possible.
• Auto enable move operations if compiler supports to reduce memory copy.
• Scan only once during parse.
• Type-traits for value input and elegant cast between types.
• High-concurrency support. No global mutex lock (compare with bxxst).
• Transfer as-is, as less en(de)coding operations as possible.
• Hardcode en(de)coding, without depends of library like iconv or system APIs.

TODO

• Reader & Writer for file / stream.
• New readv method by passing iovec param.
• Optimization of using CPU intrinsics set.

Misc

• Please feel free to use xpjson.
• Looking forward to your suggestions.
• If your project is using xpjson, you can show your project or company here by creating a issue or let me know.