Parse JSON data in AutoHotkey

ahk_json allows you to parse JSON data in AutoHotkey.

It features Unicode support when loading and serializing JSON data, and uses AutoHotkey objects to support JSON lists and dictionaries. The code exists in a single file, json.ahk, which you should put in your lib/ directory so that it can be found by #include directives.

To load JSON data from a string, use the json_load() function.

#include <json>

blob := "{""a"": ""awesome"", ""b"": [0, 10, 20], ""c"": {""d"": true}}"
data := json_load(blob)

msgbox, % "data['a'] == '" . data["a"] . "'"  ; `awesome`
msgbox, % "data['b'][1] == " . data["b"][1]  ; `10`
msgbox, % "data['c']['d'] == " . data["c"]["d"]  ; `1`

To dump JSON data into a string, use the json_dump() function.

#include <json>

data := {"a": 10, "b": ["it's", "a", "list"], "c": {"nest": "yes"}}
blob := json_dump(data)

msgbox, % blob

Limitations

Due to mistakes in the AutoHotkey design, json_load() and json_dump() both have limitations that currently cannot be corrected.

true, false and null are loaded as numbers

AutoHotkey has no concept of booleans or null values. Its built-in true and false literals are aliases for 1 and 0, respectively.

To accommodate this limitation, json_load() loads these JSON values in this way:

JSON value	AutoHotkey value
true	1
false	0
null	0

Numbers are dumped as strings

AutoHotkey makes no distinction between text and numeric values. As a result, when json_dump() renders values that are not objects or arrays, there is no way to determine whether the value is a number or a string. Therefore, json_dump() only outputs strings, even if the value might be numeric:

data := {"integer": 0, "float": 1.0}
msgbox, % json_dump(data)  ; `{"integer": "0", "float": "1.0"}`

Applications that consume the JSON output from ahk_json must convert strings to numbers if needed.

JSON object keys are case insensitive

AutoHotkey ignores the case of all dictionary keys. As a result, if JSON data contains keys that only differ by case, AutoHotkey will quietly overwrite the existing data:

blob := "{""A"": ""UPPERCASE"", ""a"": ""lowercase""}"
data := json_load(blob)
msgbox, % "data['A'] == " . data["A"]  ; `data['A'] == lowercase`

Currently there is no known way to force AutoHotkey to respect the case of dictionary keys. Applications that load JSON data must be aware that they may lose data due to AutoHotkey's behavior.

Some key names are reserved

AutoHotkey stores object data keys in the same namespace as object methods and attributes. This means that key names like "base" and "length" will collide with AutoHotkey's own methods and attributes.

Currently there is no way to avoid these collisions. Applications that load JSON data should design their domain-specific JSON schema to avoid the problem.

Null characters cannot be used

AutoHotkey cannot handle null characters (\0) in strings. If a JSON string is loaded with an escaped null character (\u0000), data may be lost.

Applications should avoid dealing with null characters in JSON.

Unit tests

ahk_json uses Python to test the code in json.ahk.

If you want to run the test suite you must install AutoHotkey 1.1.27.04 or higher. Python will automatically find and launch AutoHotkey from the PROGRAMFILES or PROGRAMFILES(x86) environment variables.

License

ahk_json is released under the terms of the MIT license. The text of the license can be found in the LICENSE.txt file.