Catman...::JSON(3pm)

💖 Catman...::JSON(3pm) 💖

okay bestie, so this is the manual page for Catman...::JSON, section 3pm — and the actual star of the show, the module itself, is Catmandu::Exporter::JSON. yes the page name and the module name are doing two different things, we love that for them, no notes. it's giving "user contributed perl documentation" energy and honestly? iconic. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

Catmandu::Exporter::JSON — a JSON exporter. that's it, that's the whole name section, she's concise 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

okay so here's how you actually use her. three ways, all valid, all slay:

# From the command line

catmandu convert YAML to JSON --pretty 1 < input.yml

# Export in the line-delimited format

catmandu convert YAML to JSON --line_delimited 1 < input.yml

# In a Perl script

use Catmandu;

my $exporter = Catmandu->exporter('JSON', fix => 'myfix.txt');

$exporter->add_many($arrayref);
$exporter->add_many($iterator);
$exporter->add_many(sub { });

$exporter->add($hashref);

printf "exported %d items\n" , $exporter->count;

like, add_many takes an arrayref, an iterator, or even a bare sub { } 🫶 and then you can flex with a little printf counting your items at the end. main character behaviour fr fr.

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so basically: this Catmandu::Exporter exports your items serialized in JSON format. that's the vibe. 💖

and by default? every single item gets printed condensed onto one line. no sprawl, no drama, just tight little lines. periodt.

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🎀 CONFIGURATION 🎀

here come the knobs and dials bestie, read carefully, there's a lot of them but they're all gonna eat:

• file — write your output to a local file, given by its path or a file handle. OR, plot twist, you can pass a scalar reference to write into a string, or a code reference to write into a callback function. three doors, pick your fave 🚪✨
• fh — write the output to an IO::Handle. if you don't specify one, Catmandu::Util::io steps in and creates the output handle from the file argument, or just falls back to using STDOUT. she's resourceful 💅
• fix — an ARRAY of one or more fixes or file scripts that get applied to your exported items. glow-up your data on the way out, we love a transformation arc 🧚
• encoding — the binmode of the output stream fh. defaults to ":utf8". keep it cute, keep it utf8 💜
• pretty — pretty-print that JSON. make it look good for the timeline ✨
• indent, space_before, space_after, canonical — these are your JSON serialization options. the formatting squad, all four of them, grouped together, doing their little formatting things 🎀
• array — structure the data as a JSON array. default is 1. so yeah, array mode is the factory setting 👑
• line_delimited — export items as newline delimited JSON. default is 0.

⚠️ okay important bestie, listen: if line_delimited is 1, then array, pretty, indent, space_before and space_after all get ignored. like, completely. they're standing outside the club. so don't come for me when your pretty does nothing, i warned you 😭

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• Catmandu::Exporter::YAML — the sibling, the other format, the parallel universe version of this whole situation 🦋

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and that's the whole page bestie!! this gem is perl v5.40.1 and this documentation is dated 2026-01-24. mwah, go export something gorgeous 💖💅✨