JSON::PP(3pm)

📦
version 5.42.3 · 12 versions
, in alpine 3.24

💖 JSON::PP(3pm) 💖

okay bestie, this is JSON::PP(3pm) from the Perl Programmers Reference Guide, and it’s honestly such a useful little icon. Let’s get into it. 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

JSON::PP — a JSON::XS compatible pure-Perl module. periodt.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

the whole vibe in one look:

use JSON::PP;

# exported functions, they croak on error
# and expect/generate UTF-8

$utf8_encoded_json_text = encode_json $perl_hash_or_arrayref;
$perl_hash_or_arrayref  = decode_json $utf8_encoded_json_text;

# OO-interface

$json = JSON::PP->new->ascii->pretty->allow_nonref;

$pretty_printed_json_text = $json->encode( $perl_scalar );
$perl_scalar = $json->decode( $json_text );

# Note that JSON version 2.0 and above will automatically use
# JSON::XS or JSON::PP, so you should be able to just:

use JSON;

🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

JSON::PP is a pure perl JSON decoder/encoder, and it’s (almost) compatible with the much faster JSON::XS written by Marc Lehmann in C. It works as the fallback module when you use the JSON module without having installed JSON::XS. slay for reliability. 💅

Because of this fallback feature of JSON.pm, JSON::PP tries not to be more JavaScript-friendly than JSON::XS — meaning it does not escape extra characters such as U+2028 and U+2029, etc. The whole point is so you don’t silently lose that JavaScript-friendliness when you use JSON.pm and install JSON::XS for speed or by accident. If you need a JavaScript-friendly RFC7159-compliant pure perl module, try JSON::Tiny, which is derived from the Mojolicious web framework and is also smaller and faster than JSON::PP. cute and efficient, we love to see it. 🦋

JSON::PP has been in the Perl core since Perl 5.14, mainly for CPAN toolchain modules to parse META.json. iconic behavior, no cap. 👑

🫶 FUNCTIONAL INTERFACE 🫶

okay so this section is taken from JSON::XS almost verbatim. encode_json and decode_json are exported by default. 💖

🎀 encode_json 🎀

$json_text = encode_json $perl_scalar

Converts the given Perl data structure to a UTF-8 encoded, binary string — and yes, that means the string contains octets only. Croaks on error. 😭

This function call is functionally identical to:

$json_text = JSON::PP->new->utf8->encode($perl_scalar)

Except being faster. the function is the speedy one, iykyk. ⭐

🎀 decode_json 🎀

$perl_scalar = decode_json $json_text

The opposite of encode_json: it expects a UTF-8 (binary) string and tries to parse that as a UTF-8 encoded JSON text, returning the resulting reference. Croaks on error. 💀

This function call is functionally identical to:

$perl_scalar = JSON::PP->new->utf8->decode($json_text)

Except being faster. again: faster is the whole point. ✨

🎀 JSON::PP::is_bool 🎀

$is_boolean = JSON::PP::is_bool($scalar)

Returns true if the passed scalar represents either JSON::PP::true or JSON::PP::false — two constants that act like 1 and 0 respectively and are also used to represent JSON "true" and "false" in Perl strings. 🎀

On perl 5.36 and above, it will also return true when given one of perl’s standard boolean values, such as the result of a comparison. 🌸

See MAPPING, below, for more information on how JSON values are mapped to Perl. 🫶

👑 OBJECT-ORIENTED INTERFACE 👑

This section is also taken from JSON::XS. The object oriented interface lets you configure your own encoding or decoding style, within the limits of supported formats. main character energy for configuration, honestly. 💅

🦋 new 🦋

$json = JSON::PP->new

Creates a new JSON::PP object that can be used to de/encode JSON strings. All boolean flags described below are by default disabled — with the exception of allow_nonref, which defaults to enabled since version 4.0. noted. 👑

The mutators for flags all return the JSON::PP object again, so calls can be chained:

my $json = JSON::PP->new->utf8->space_after->encode({a => [1,2]})
=> {"a": [1, 2]}

✨ ascii ✨

$json = $json->ascii([$enable])

$enabled = $json->get_ascii

If $enable is true (or missing), then the encode method will not generate characters outside the code range 0..127 (which is ASCII). Any Unicode characters outside that range will be escaped using either a single \uXXXX (BMP characters) or a double \uHHHH\uLLLLL escape sequence, as per RFC4627. The resulting encoded JSON text can be treated as a native Unicode string, an ascii-encoded, latin1-encoded or UTF-8 encoded string, or any other superset of ASCII. pretty versatile of it. 🦋

If $enable is false, then the encode method will not escape Unicode characters unless required by the JSON syntax or other flags. This results in a faster and more compact format. 🔥

See also the section ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES later in this document.

The main use for this flag is to produce JSON texts that can be transmitted over a 7-bit channel, as the encoded JSON texts will not contain any 8 bit characters. slay for compatibility. 💖

JSON::PP->new->ascii(1)->encode([chr 0x10401])
=> ["\ud801\udc01"]

✨ latin1 ✨

$json = $json->latin1([$enable])

$enabled = $json->get_latin1

If $enable is true (or missing), then the encode method will encode the resulting JSON text as latin1 (or iso-8859-1), escaping any characters outside the code range 0..255. The resulting string can be treated as a latin1-encoded JSON text or a native Unicode string. The decode method will not be affected in any way by this flag, because decode by default expects Unicode, which is a strict superset of latin1. 💅

If $enable is false, then the encode method will not escape Unicode characters unless required by the JSON syntax or other flags. 🌸

See also the section ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES later in this document.

The main use for this flag is efficiently encoding binary data as JSON text, as most octets will not be escaped, resulting in a smaller encoded size. The disadvantage is that the resulting JSON text is encoded in latin1 — and it must correctly be treated as such when storing and transferring — which is a rare encoding for JSON. It is therefore most useful when you want to store data structures known to contain binary data efficiently in files or databases, not when talking to other JSON encoders/decoders. important distinction, bestie. 🫶

JSON::PP->new->latin1->encode (["\x{89}\x{abc}"]
=> ["\x{89}\\u0abc"]    # (perl syntax, U+abc escaped, U+89 not)

✨ utf8 ✨

$json = $json->utf8([$enable])

$enabled = $json->get_utf8

If $enable is true (or missing), then the encode method will encode the JSON result into UTF-8, as required by many protocols, while the decode method expects to be handled a UTF-8-encoded string. Please note that UTF-8-encoded strings do not contain any characters outside the range 0..255, so they are useful for bytewise/binary I/O. In future versions, enabling this option might enable autodetection of the UTF-16 and UTF-32 encoding families, as described in RFC4627. 👀

If $enable is false, then the encode method will return the JSON string as a (non-encoded) Unicode string, while decode expects a Unicode string. Any decoding or encoding — like to UTF-8 or UTF-16 — needs to be done yourself, e.g. using the Encode module. do it yourself era, apparently. 😭

See also the section ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES later in this document.

Example, output UTF-16BE-encoded JSON:

use Encode;
$jsontext = encode "UTF-16BE", JSON::PP->new->encode ($object);

Example, decode UTF-32LE-encoded JSON:

use Encode;
$object = JSON::PP->new->decode (decode "UTF-32LE", $jsontext);

🎀 pretty 🎀

$json = $json->pretty([$enable])

This enables (or disables) all of the indent, space_before and space_after — and in the future possibly more — flags in one call to generate the most readable (or most compact) form possible. one button, whole glow-up. 💅✨

🎀 indent 🎀

$json = $json->indent([$enable])

$enabled = $json->get_indent

If $enable is true (or missing), then the encode method will use a multiline format as output, putting every array member or object/hash key-value pair into its own line, indenting them properly. aesthetic and readable. 🌸

If $enable is false, no newlines or indenting will be produced, and the resulting JSON text is guaranteed not to contain any "newlines". compact queen. 👑

This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts. 🫶

The default indent space length is three. You can use indent_length to change the length. noted, bestie. 💖

🎀 space_before 🎀

$json = $json->space_before([$enable])

$enabled = $json->get_space_before

If $enable is true (or missing), then the encode method will add an extra optional space before the ":" separating keys from values in JSON objects. 🦋

If $enable is false, then the encode method will not add any extra space at those places. no extra space, no extra drama. 💅

This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts. You will also most likely combine this setting with space_after. 🫶

Example, space_before enabled, space_after and indent disabled:

{"key" :"value"}

🎀 space_after 🎀

$json = $json->space_after([$enable])

$enabled = $json->get_space_after

If $enable is true (or missing), then the encode method will add an extra optional space after the ":" separating keys from values in JSON objects and extra whitespace after the "," separating key-value pairs and array members. breathing room, we love her. ✨

If $enable is false, then the encode method will not add any extra space at those places. 😌

This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts. 🫶

Example, space_before and indent disabled, space_after enabled:

{"key": "value"}

🧚 relaxed 🧚

$json = $json->relaxed([$enable])

$enabled = $json->get_relaxed

If $enable is true (or missing), then decode will accept some extensions to normal JSON syntax — see below. encode will not be affected in anyway. Be aware that this option makes you accept invalid JSON texts as if they were valid! 😱 I suggest only using this option to parse application-specific files written by humans — configuration files, resource files etc. human-written chaos, handle with care. 💅

If $enable is false (the default), then decode will only accept valid JSON texts. strict queen behavior. 👑

Currently accepted extensions are:

  • list items can have an end-comma — JSON separates array elements and key-value pairs with commas. This can be annoying if you write JSON texts manually and want to be able to quickly append elements, so this extension accepts comma at the end of such items not just between them:
[
   1,
   2, <- this comma not normally allowed
]
{
   "k1": "v1",
   "k2": "v2", <- this comma not normally allowed
}
  • shell-style '#'-comments — whenever JSON allows whitespace, shell-style comments are additionally allowed. They are terminated by the first carriage-return or line-feed character, after which more white-space and comments are allowed. 🎀
[
   1, # this comment not allowed in JSON
      # neither this one...
]
  • C-style multiple-line '/* */'-comments (JSON::PP only) — whenever JSON allows whitespace, C-style multiple-line comments are additionally allowed. Everything between /* and */ is a comment, after which more white-space and comments are allowed. 🦋🌸
             [
                1, /* this comment not allowed in JSON */
                   /* neither this one... */
             ]
  • C++-style one-line //-comments (JSON::PP only) — whenever JSON allows whitespace, these one-line comments are also allowed. They're terminated by the first carriage-return or line-feed character, and after that you can have more whitespace and comments. slay.
             [
                1, // this comment not allowed in JSON
                   // neither this one...
             ]
  • literal ASCII TAB characters in strings — literal ASCII TAB characters are now allowed in strings (and treated as "\t"). iconic
             [
                "Hello\tWorld",
                "Hello<TAB>World", # literal <TAB> would not normally be allowed
             ]

💖 canonical 💖

$json = $json->canonical([$enable])

$enabled = $json->get_canonical

If $enable is true (or missing), the encode method outputs JSON objects with their keys sorted. Heads up: that adds a comparatively high overhead.

If $enable is false, encode spits out key-value pairs in whatever order Perl stores them — which will likely change between runs of the same script, and can even change within the same run from 5.18 onwards.

This option is useful if you want the same data structure to be encoded as the same JSON text (given the same overall settings). If it's disabled, the same hash might be encoded differently even if it contains the same data, because key-value pairs have no inherent ordering in Perl.

This setting has no effect when decoding JSON texts.

This setting has currently no effect on tied hashes.

🌸 allow_nonref 🌸

$json = $json->allow_nonref([$enable])

$enabled = $json->get_allow_nonref

Unlike other boolean options, this option is enabled by default beginning with version 4.0. periodt.

If $enable is true (or missing), the encode method can convert a non-reference into its corresponding string, number or null JSON value, which is an extension to RFC4627. Likewise, decode will accept those JSON values instead of croaking.

If $enable is false, the encode method will croak if it isn't passed an arrayref or hashref, because JSON texts must either be an object or array. Likewise, decode will croak if given something that is not a JSON object or array.

Example: encoding a Perl scalar as a JSON value with allow_nonref turned off, resulting in an error:

JSON::PP->new->allow_nonref(0)->encode ("Hello, World!")
=> hash- or arrayref expected...

🦋 allow_unknown 🦋

$json = $json->allow_unknown([$enable])

$enabled = $json->get_allow_unknown

If $enable is true (or missing), encode will not throw an exception when it encounters values it cannot represent in JSON (for example, filehandles) — instead it will encode a JSON null value. Note that blessed objects are not included here and are handled separately by allow_blessed.

If $enable is false (the default), encode will throw an exception when it encounters anything it cannot encode as JSON.

This option does not affect decode in any way, and it is recommended to leave it off unless you know your communications partner. iykyk.

🎀 allow_blessed 🎀

$json = $json->allow_blessed([$enable])

$enabled = $json->get_allow_blessed

See OBJECT SERIALISATION for details.

If $enable is true (or missing), the encode method will not barf when it encounters a blessed reference that it cannot convert otherwise. Instead, a JSON null value is encoded instead of the object.

If $enable is false (the default), encode will throw an exception when it encounters a blessed object that it cannot convert otherwise.

This setting has no effect on decode.

✨ convert_blessed ✨

$json = $json->convert_blessed([$enable])

$enabled = $json->get_convert_blessed

See OBJECT SERIALISATION for details.

If $enable is true (or missing), then encode, upon encountering a blessed object, will check for the availability of the TO_JSON method on the object's class. If found, it will be called in scalar context and the resulting scalar will be encoded instead of the object.

The TO_JSON method may safely call die if it wants. If TO_JSON returns other blessed objects, those will be handled in the same way. TO_JSON must take care of not causing an endless recursion cycle (== crash) in this case. The name of TO_JSON was chosen because other methods called by the Perl core (== not by the user of the object) are usually in upper case letters, and to avoid collisions with any to_json function or method.

If $enable is false (the default), encode will not consider this type of conversion.

This setting has no effect on decode.

💜 allow_tags 💜

$json = $json->allow_tags([$enable])

$enabled = $json->get_allow_tags

See OBJECT SERIALISATION for details.

If $enable is true (or missing), then encode, upon encountering a blessed object, will check for the availability of the FREEZE method on the object's class. If found, it will be used to serialise the object into a nonstandard tagged JSON value (that JSON decoders cannot decode).

It also causes decode to parse such tagged JSON values and deserialise them via a call to the THAW method.

If $enable is false (the default), encode will not consider this type of conversion, and tagged JSON values will cause a parse error in decode, as if tags were not part of the grammar.

🍓 boolean_values 🍓

$json->boolean_values([$false, $true])

($false,  $true) = $json->get_boolean_values

By default, JSON booleans will be decoded as overloaded $JSON::PP::false and $JSON::PP::true objects.

With this method you can specify your own boolean values for decoding — on decode, JSON false will be decoded as a copy of $false, and JSON true will be decoded as $true ("copy" here is the same thing as assigning a value to another variable, i.e. "$copy = $false").

This is useful when you want to pass a decoded data structure directly to other serialisers like YAML, Data::MessagePack and so on.

Note that this works only when you decode. You can set incompatible boolean objects (like boolean), but when you encode a data structure with such boolean objects, you still need to enable convert_blessed (and add a TO_JSON method if necessary).

Calling this method without any arguments will reset the booleans to their default values.

get_boolean_values will return both $false and $true values, or the empty list when they are set to the default.

🧚 core_bools 🧚

$json->core_bools([$enable]);

If $enable is true (or missing), then decode will produce standard perl boolean values. It's equivalent to calling:

$json->boolean_values(!!1, !!0)

get_core_bools will return true if this has been set. On perl 5.36, it will also return true if the boolean values have been set to perl's core booleans using the boolean_values method.

The methods unblessed_bool and get_unblessed_bool are provided as aliases for compatibility with Cpanel::JSON::XS.

🌈 filter_json_object 🌈

$json = $json->filter_json_object([$coderef])

When $coderef is specified, it will be called from decode each time it decodes a JSON object. The only argument is a reference to the newly-created hash. If the code references returns a single scalar (which need not be a reference), this value (or rather a copy of it) is inserted into the deserialised data structure. If it returns an empty list (NOTE: not undef, which is a valid scalar), the original deserialised hash will be inserted. This setting can slow down decoding considerably.

When $coderef is omitted or undefined, any existing callback will be removed and decode will not change the deserialised hash in any way.

Example: convert all JSON objects into the integer 5:

my $js = JSON::PP->new->filter_json_object(sub { 5 });
# returns [5]
$js->decode('[{}]');
# returns 5
$js->decode('{"a":1, "b":2}');

💅 filter_json_single_key_object 💅

$json = $json->filter_json_single_key_object($key [=> $coderef])

Works remotely similar to filter_json_object, but is only called for JSON objects having a single key named $key.

This $coderef is called before the one specified via filter_json_object, if any. It gets passed the single value in the JSON object. If it returns a single value, it will be inserted into the data structure. If it returns nothing (not even undef but the empty list), the callback from filter_json_object will be called next, as if no single-key callback were specified.

If $coderef is omitted or undefined, the corresponding callback will be disabled. There can only ever be one callback for a given key.

As this callback gets called less often than the filter_json_object one, decoding speed will not usually suffer as much. Therefore, single-key objects make excellent targets to serialise Perl objects into, especially as single-key JSON objects are as close to the type-tagged value concept as JSON gets (it's basically an ID/VALUE tuple). Of course, JSON does not support this in any way, so you need to make sure your data never looks like a serialised Perl hash.

Typical names for the single object key are "__class_whatever__", or "$__dollars_are_rarely_used__$" or "}ugly_brace_placement", or even things like "__class_md5sum(classname)__", to reduce the risk of clashing with real hashes.

Example: decode JSON objects of the form { "__widget__" => <id> } into the corresponding $WIDGET{<id>} object:

# return whatever is in $WIDGET{5}:
JSON::PP
   ->new
   ->filter_json_single_key_object (__widget__ => sub {
         $WIDGET{ $_[0] }
      })
   ->decode ('{"__widget__": 5')

# this can be used with a TO_JSON method in some "widget" class
# for serialisation to json:
sub WidgetBase::TO_JSON {
   my ($self) = @_;

   unless ($self->{id}) {
      $self->{id} = ..get..some..id..;
      $WIDGET{$self->{id}} = $self;
   }

   { __widget__ => $self->{id} }
}

👑 shrink 👑

$json = $json->shrink([$enable])

$enabled = $json->get_shrink

If $enable is true (or missing), the string returned by encode will be shrunk (i.e. downgraded if possible).

The actual definition of what shrink does might change in future versions, but it will always try to save space at the expense of time.

If $enable is false, then JSON::PP does nothing. lowkey peaceful.

⭐ max_depth ⭐

$json = $json->max_depth([$maximum_nesting_depth])

$max_depth = $json->get_max_depth

so it sets the max nesting level (default 512) that it'll accept while encoding or decoding ✨. If it spots a higher nesting level than that in the JSON text or in your Perl data structure, the encoder and decoder just stop and croak right there 💀.

"Nesting level" literally means the number of hash- or arrayrefs the encoder has to walk through to reach a given point — or, in a string, the number of { or [ characters it hits before running into their matching closing parenthesis on the way to a given character 🔍.

Setting max depth to one disallows any nesting, so that guarantees your object is only a single hash/object or array. Very minimalist of you 💅.

If no argument is given, the highest possible setting gets used — which is, like, rarely useful ngl 🙈.

See "SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS" in JSON::XS for more info on why this is useful.

max_size

$json = $json->max_size([$maximum_string_size])

$max_size = $json->get_max_size

Sets the maximum length a JSON text may have (in bytes) when decoding is being attempted. The default is 0, which means no limit at all 🎀. When decode gets called on a string longer than that many bytes, it won't even try to decode — it just throws an exception 😭. This setting has no effect on encode (yet).

If no argument is given, the limit check gets deactivated (same as when 0 is specified).

See "SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS" in JSON::XS for more info on why this is useful.

encode

$json_text = $json->encode($perl_scalar)

Converts the given Perl value or data structure into its JSON representation ✨. Croaks on error.

decode

$perl_scalar = $json->decode($json_text)

The literal opposite of encode 💖: expects a JSON text and tries to parse it, handing you back the resulting simple scalar or reference. Croaks on error.

decode_prefix

($perl_scalar, $characters) = $json->decode_prefix($json_text)

Works just like the decode method, except that instead of raising an exception when there's trailing garbage after the first JSON object, it silently stops parsing right there and returns the number of characters consumed so far 👑.

This is useful if your JSON texts aren't delimited by an outer protocol and you need to know where the JSON text ends 🔥.

JSON::PP->new->decode_prefix ("[1] the tail")
=> ([1], 3)

🌈 FLAGS FOR JSON::PP ONLY 🌈

Okay so the following flags and properties are for JSON::PP only 🫶. If you use any of these, you can't make your application run faster by swapping JSON::PP out for JSON::XS. No cap 💅. And if you need these and a speed boost, you might want to try Cpanel::JSON::XS, a fork of JSON::XS by Reini Urban, which supports some of these (with a different set of incompatibilities). Most of these historical flags are only kept around for backward compatibility, and should not be used in a new application 🎀.

allow_singlequote

$json = $json->allow_singlequote([$enable])
$enabled = $json->get_allow_singlequote

If $enable is true (or missing), then decode will accept invalid JSON texts that contain strings which begin and end with single quotation marks ✨. encode will not be affected in any way. But like — be aware that this option makes you accept invalid JSON texts as if they were valid 😭! I suggest only using this option to parse application-specific files written by humans (configuration files, resource files etc.) 🦋.

If $enable is false (the default), then decode will only accept valid JSON texts.

$json->allow_singlequote->decode(qq|{"foo":'bar'}|);
$json->allow_singlequote->decode(qq|{'foo':"bar"}|);
$json->allow_singlequote->decode(qq|{'foo':'bar'}|);

allow_barekey

$json = $json->allow_barekey([$enable])
$enabled = $json->get_allow_barekey

If $enable is true (or missing), then decode will accept invalid JSON texts containing JSON objects whose names don't begin and end with quotation marks 🎀. encode will not be affected in any way. Be aware that this option makes you accept invalid JSON texts as if they were valid 😭! I suggest only using this option to parse application-specific files written by humans (configuration files, resource files etc.).

If $enable is false (the default), then decode will only accept valid JSON texts.

$json->allow_barekey->decode(qq|{foo:"bar"}|);

allow_bignum

$json = $json->allow_bignum([$enable])
$enabled = $json->get_allow_bignum

If $enable is true (or missing), then decode will convert big integers Perl can't handle as an integer into Math::BigInt objects, and convert floating numbers into Math::BigFloat objects 💜. encode will convert Math::BigInt and Math::BigFloat objects into JSON numbers ✨.

$json->allow_nonref->allow_bignum;
$bigfloat = $json->decode('2.000000000000000000000000001');
print $json->encode($bigfloat);
# => 2.000000000000000000000000001

See also MAPPING.

loose

$json = $json->loose([$enable])
$enabled = $json->get_loose

If $enable is true (or missing), then decode will accept invalid JSON texts that contain unescaped [\x00-\x1f\x22\x5c] characters 😳. encode will not be affected in any way. Be aware that this option makes you accept invalid JSON texts as if they were valid 😭! I suggest only using this option to parse application-specific files written by humans (configuration files, resource files etc.).

If $enable is false (the default), then decode will only accept valid JSON texts.

$json->loose->decode(qq|["abc
                               def"]|);

escape_slash

$json = $json->escape_slash([$enable])
$enabled = $json->get_escape_slash

If $enable is true (or missing), then encode will explicitly escape slash (solidus; U+002F) characters — this lowers the risk of XSS (cross site scripting) that could be caused by </script> sitting in a JSON text, at the cost of bloating the size of your JSON texts 🌸.

This option may be useful when you embed JSON in HTML, but embedding arbitrary JSON in HTML (by some HTML template toolkit or by string interpolation) is risky in general, fr fr. You must escape the necessary characters in the correct order, depending on the context ⚠️.

decode will not be affected in any way.

indent_length

$json = $json->indent_length($number_of_spaces)
$length = $json->get_indent_length

This option is only useful when you also enable indent or pretty 🎀.

JSON::XS indents with three spaces when you encode (if requested by indent or pretty), and the number cannot be changed. JSON::PP lets you change/get the number of indent spaces with this mutator/accessor 💅. The default number of spaces is three (the same as JSON::XS), and the acceptable range is from 0 (no indentation; though it'd be better to disable indentation with indent(0)) to 15.

sort_by

$json = $json->sort_by($code_ref)
$json = $json->sort_by($subroutine_name)

If you just want to sort keys (names) in JSON objects when you encode, enable the canonical option (see above) — that lets you sort object keys alphabetically ✨.

But if you genuinely need to sort non-alphabetically for whatever reason, you can hand a code reference (or a subroutine name) to sort_by, and then that argument gets passed to Perl's sort built-in function 👑

Since the sorting happens in the JSON::PP scope, you usually need to prepend JSON::PP:: to the subroutine name, and also to the special variables $a and $b used in the subrontine used by the sort function 🫶.

Example:

my %ORDER = (id => 1, class => 2, name => 3);
$json->sort_by(sub {
    ($ORDER{$JSON::PP::a} // 999) <=> ($ORDER{$JSON::PP::b} // 999)
    or $JSON::PP::a cmp $JSON::PP::b
});
print $json->encode([
    {name => 'CPAN', id => 1, href => 'http://cpan.org'}
]);
# [{"id":1,"name":"CPAN","href":"http://cpan.org"}]

Note that sort_by affects all the plain hashes in the data structure 😭. If you need finer control, tie the necessary hashes with a module that implements an ordered hash (such as Hash::Ordered and Tie::IxHash). canonical and sort_by don't affect the key order in tied hashes 💅.

use Hash::Ordered;
tie my %hash, 'Hash::Ordered',
    (name => 'CPAN', id => 1, href => 'http://cpan.org');
print $json->encode([\%hash]);
# [{"name":"CPAN","id":1,"href":"http://cpan.org"}] # order is kept

💫 INCREMENTAL PARSING 💫

Okay bestie, this section is also taken from JSON::XS, so you know it's quality.

Sometimes you need incremental parsing of JSON texts, and while this module always has to keep both the JSON text and the resulting Perl data structure in memory at one time, it does let you parse a JSON stream incrementally. It does this by accumulating text until it has a full JSON object, which it then can decode. This process is similar to using decode_prefix to see if a full JSON object is available, but it's much more efficient (and can be implemented with a minimum of method calls). Iconic behaviour honestly.

JSON::PP will only attempt to parse the JSON text once it's sure it has enough text to get a decisive result, using a very simple but truly incremental parser. Which means it sometimes won't stop as early as the full parser — for example, it doesn't detect mismatched parentheses. The only thing it guarantees is that it starts decoding as soon as a syntactically valid JSON text has been seen. So you need to set resource limits (e.g. max_size) to ensure the parser will stop parsing in the presence of syntax errors. Please set those limits, bestie, I'm begging.

The following methods implement this incremental parser. 🫶

incr_parse

    $json->incr_parse( [$string] ) # void context

    $obj_or_undef = $json->incr_parse( [$string] ) # scalar context

    @obj_or_empty = $json->incr_parse( [$string] ) # list context

This is the central parsing function, the main character of the whole incremental-parsing arc. It can both append new text and extract objects from the stream accumulated so far (both of these functions are optional, no pressure).

If $string is given, then this string is appended to the already existing JSON fragment stored in the $json object.

After that, if the function is called in void context, it will simply return without doing anything further. Perfect for adding more text in as many chunks as you want. Tiny chunks? Sure. Chunky chunks? Also yes. 💅

If the method is called in scalar context, then it will try to extract exactly one JSON object. If that's successful, it will return this object, otherwise it will return undef. If there is a parse error, this method will croak just as decode would do (one can then use incr_skip to skip the erroneous part). This is the most common way of using the method, so like, remember it.

And finally, in list context, it will try to extract as many objects from the stream as it can find and return them, or the empty list otherwise. For this to work, there must be no separators (other than whitespace) between the JSON objects or arrays — instead they must be concatenated back-to-back. If an error occurs, an exception will be raised as in the scalar context case. Note that in this case, any previously-parsed JSON texts will be lost. 😭 Gone. Poof. No cap.

Example: parse some JSON arrays/objects in a given string and return them.

    my @objs = JSON::PP->new->incr_parse ("[5][7][1,2]");

incr_text

    $lvalue_string = $json->incr_text

This method returns the currently stored JSON fragment as an lvalue, that is, you can manipulate it. This only works when a preceding call to incr_parse in scalar context successfully returned an object. Under all other circumstances you must not call this function (I mean it. although in simple tests it might actually work, it will fail under real world conditions). As a special exception, you can also call this method before having parsed anything.

That means you can only use this function to look at or manipulate text before or after complete JSON objects, not while the parser is in the middle of parsing a JSON object. Mid-parse? Do not. I'm serious.

This function is useful in two cases: a) finding the trailing text after a JSON object or b) parsing multiple JSON objects separated by non-JSON text (such as commas).

incr_skip

    $json->incr_skip

This will reset the state of the incremental parser and will remove the parsed text from the input buffer so far. This is useful after incr_parse died, in which case the input buffer and incremental parser state is left unchanged, to skip the text parsed so far and to reset the parse state. Cleanup era.

The difference to incr_reset is that only text until the parse error occurred is removed.

incr_reset

    $json->incr_reset

This completely resets the incremental parser, that is, after this call, it will be as if the parser had never parsed anything. 🎀 Brand new baby parser. Fresh start. No memories.

This is useful if you want to repeatedly parse JSON objects and want to ignore any trailing data, which means you have to reset the parser after each successful decode.

🗺️ MAPPING 🗺️

Most of this section is also taken from JSON::XS. (We stay stanning.)

This section describes how JSON::PP maps Perl values to JSON values and vice versa. These mappings are designed to "do the right thing" in most circumstances automatically, preserving round-tripping characteristics (what you put in comes out as something equivalent). Round-trip queen behaviour.

For the more enlightened: note that in the following descriptions, lowercase perl refers to the Perl interpreter, while uppercase Perl refers to the abstract Perl language itself. Case matters, bestie, that's the whole bit.

JSON -> PERL

object

A JSON object becomes a reference to a hash in Perl. No ordering of object keys is preserved (JSON does not preserve object key ordering itself). Chaos order, that's just how it is.

array

A JSON array becomes a reference to an array in Perl.

string

A JSON string becomes a string scalar in Perl — Unicode codepoints in JSON are represented by the same codepoints in the Perl string, so no manual decoding is necessary. 😌 Effortless.

number

A JSON number becomes either an integer, numeric (floating point) or string scalar in perl, depending on its range and any fractional parts. On the Perl level, there is no difference between those as Perl handles all the conversion details, but an integer may take slightly less memory and might represent more values exactly than floating point numbers.

If the number consists of digits only, JSON::PP will try to represent it as an integer value. If that fails, it will try to represent it as a numeric (floating point) value if that is possible without loss of precision. Otherwise it will preserve the number as a string value (in which case you lose roundtripping ability, as the JSON number will be re-encoded to a JSON string). Yeah, that last one is a bit of a downgrade, ngl.

Numbers containing a fractional or exponential part will always be represented as numeric (floating point) values, possibly at a loss of precision (in which case you might lose perfect roundtripping ability, but the JSON number will still be re-encoded as a JSON number).

Note that precision is not accuracy — binary floating point values cannot represent most decimal fractions exactly, and when converting from and to floating point, JSON::PP only guarantees precision up to but not including the least significant bit.

When allow_bignum is enabled, big integer values and any numeric values will be converted into Math::BigInt and Math::BigFloat objects respectively, without becoming string scalars or losing precision. 🔥 Big number glow-up.

true, false

These JSON atoms become JSON::PP::true and JSON::PP::false, respectively. They are overloaded to act almost exactly like the numbers 1 and 0. You can check whether a scalar is a JSON boolean by using the JSON::PP::is_bool function.

null

A JSON null atom becomes undef in Perl.

shell-style comments (# text)

As a nonstandard extension to the JSON syntax that is enabled by the relaxed setting, shell-style comments are allowed. They can start anywhere outside strings and go till the end of the line. Nonstandard but we love her.

tagged values ((tag)value).

Another nonstandard extension to the JSON syntax, enabled with the allow_tags setting, are tagged values. In this implementation, the tag must be a perl package/class name encoded as a JSON string, and the value must be a JSON array encoding optional constructor arguments.

See "OBJECT SERIALISATION", below, for details.

PERL -> JSON

The mapping from Perl to JSON is slightly more difficult, as Perl is a truly typeless language, so we can only guess which JSON type is meant by a Perl value. Mystery girl language fr fr.

hash references

Perl hash references become JSON objects. As there is no inherent ordering in hash keys (or JSON objects), they will usually be encoded in a pseudo-random order. JSON::PP can optionally sort the hash keys (determined by the canonical flag and/or sort_by property), so the same data structure will serialise to the same JSON text (given same settings and version of JSON::PP), but this incurs a runtime overhead and is only rarely useful, e.g. when you want to compare some JSON text against another for equality.

array references

Perl array references become JSON arrays.

other references

Other unblessed references are generally not allowed and will cause an exception to be thrown, except for references to the integers 0 and 1, which get turned into false and true atoms in JSON. You can also use JSON::PP::false and JSON::PP::true to improve readability. 💖

   to_json [\0, JSON::PP::true]      # yields [false,true]

JSON::PP::true, JSON::PP::false

These special values become JSON true and JSON false values, respectively. You can also use \1 and \0 directly if you want.

JSON::PP::null

This special value becomes JSON null.

blessed objects

Blessed objects are not directly representable in JSON, but JSON::PP allows various ways of handling objects. See "OBJECT SERIALISATION", below, for details.

simple scalars

Simple Perl scalars (any scalar that is not a reference) are the most difficult objects to encode: JSON::PP will encode undefined scalars as JSON null values, scalars that have last been used in a string context before encoding as JSON strings, and anything else as number value:

   # dump as number
   encode_json [2]                      # yields [2]
   encode_json [-3.0e17]                # yields [-3e+17]
   my $value = 5; encode_json [$value]  # yields [5]

   # used as string, so dump as string
   print $value;
   encode_json [$value]                 # yields ["5"]

   # undef becomes null
   encode_json [undef]                  # yields [null]

You can force the type to be a JSON string by stringifying it:

   my $x = 3.1; # some variable containing a number
   "$x";        # stringified
   $x .= "";    # another, more awkward way to stringify
   print $x;    # perl does it for you, too, quite often
                # (but for older perls)

You can force the type to be a JSON number by numifying it:

okay so to force a scalar to dump as a number, the classic move is literally just numify it:

              my $x = "3"; # some variable containing a string
              $x += 0;     # numify it, ensuring it will be dumped as a number
              $x *= 1;     # same thing, the choice is yours.

And nope, you can't currently force the type in any other, less obscure, ways. That's the whole menu, bestie.

Since version 2.91_01, JSON::PP uses a different number detection logic that converts a scalar that's possible to turn into a number safely. The new logic is slightly faster, and it tends to help people who use older perl or who want to encode complicated data structures. However, this may result in a different JSON text from the one JSON::XS encodes (and thus may break tests that compare entire JSON texts). If you do need the previous behavior for compatibility or for finer control, set the PERL_JSON_PP_USE_B environmental variable to true before you use JSON::PP (or JSON.pm).

Note that numerical precision has the same meaning as under Perl (so binary to decimal conversion follows the same rules as in Perl, which can differ to other languages). Also, your perl interpreter might expose extensions to the floating point numbers of your platform, such as infinities or NaN's — these cannot be represented in JSON, and it is an error to pass those in.

⚠️ trust check, bestie: JSON::PP (and JSON::XS) trusts what you pass to the encode method (or encode_json function) is a clean, validated data structure with values that can be represented as valid JSON values only, because it's not from an external data source (as opposed to JSON texts you pass to decode or decode_json, which JSON::PP considers tainted and doesn't trust). As JSON::PP doesn't know exactly what you and consumers of your JSON texts want the unexpected values to be (you may want to convert them into null, or to stringify them with or without normalisation (string representation of infinities/NaN may vary depending on platforms), or to croak without conversion), you're advised to do what you and your consumers need before you encode, and also not to numify values that may start with values that look like a number (including infinities/NaN), without validating. fr fr, validate before you encode.

💅 OBJECT SERIALISATION 💅

As JSON cannot directly represent Perl objects, you have to choose between a pure JSON representation (without the ability to deserialise the object automatically again), and a nonstandard extension to the JSON syntax, tagged values. It's giving "pick your fighter" energy.

🦋 SERIALISATION 🦋

What happens when JSON::PP encounters a Perl object depends on the allow_blessed, convert_blessed, allow_tags and allow_bignum settings, which are used in this order:

  1. allow_tags is enabled and the object has a FREEZE method. In this case, JSON::PP creates a tagged JSON value, using a nonstandard extension to the JSON syntax.

This works by invoking the FREEZE method on the object, with the first argument being the object to serialise, and the second argument being the constant string JSON to distinguish it from other serialisers.

The FREEZE method can return any number of values (i.e. zero or more). These values and the paclkage/classname of the object will then be encoded as a tagged JSON value in the following format:

("classname")[FREEZE return values...]

e.g.:

("URI")["http://www.google.com/"]
("MyDate")[2013,10,29]
("ImageData::JPEG")["Z3...VlCg=="]

For example, the hypothetical My::Object FREEZE method might use the object's type and id members to encode the object:

sub My::Object::FREEZE {
   my ($self, $serialiser) = @_;

   ($self->{type}, $self->{id})
}
  1. convert_blessed is enabled and the object has a TO_JSON method. In this case, the TO_JSON method of the object is invoked in scalar context. It must return a single scalar that can be directly encoded into JSON. This scalar replaces the object in the JSON text.

For example, the following TO_JSON method will convert all URI objects to JSON strings when serialised. The fact that these values originally were URI objects is lost.

sub URI::TO_JSON {
   my ($uri) = @_;
   $uri->as_string
}
  1. allow_bignum is enabled and the object is a Math::BigInt or Math::BigFloat. The object will be serialised as a JSON number value.
  2. allow_blessed is enabled. The object will be serialised as a JSON null value.
  3. none of the above If none of the settings are enabled or the respective methods are missing, JSON::PP throws an exception. no cap, it will simply not let that slide.

🧚 DESERIALISATION 🧚

For deserialisation there are only two cases to consider: either nonstandard tagging was used, in which case allow_tags decides, or objects cannot be automatically be deserialised, in which case you can use postprocessing or the filter_json_object or filter_json_single_key_object callbacks to get some real objects out of your JSON.

This section only considers the tagged value case: a tagged JSON object is encountered during decoding and allow_tags is disabled, a parse error will result (as if tagged values were not part of the grammar). 💀

If allow_tags is enabled, JSON::PP will look up the THAW method of the package/classname used during serialisation (it will not attempt to load the package as a Perl module). If there is no such method, the decoding will fail with an error.

Otherwise, the THAW method is invoked with the classname as first argument, the constant string JSON as second argument, and all the values from the JSON array (the values originally returned by the FREEZE method) as remaining arguments.

The method must then return the object. While technically you can return any Perl scalar, you might have to enable the allow_nonref setting to make that work in all cases, so better return an actual blessed reference. trust me on that one.

As an example, let's implement a THAW function that regenerates the My::Object from the FREEZE example earlier:

sub My::Object::THAW {
   my ($class, $serialiser, $type, $id) = @_;

   $class->new (type => $type, id => $id)
}

🌸 ENCODING/CODESET FLAG NOTES 🌸

Okay bestie, real talk — this section is literally lifted straight from JSON::XS, and it's here because everyone keeps getting confused about the same three flags. The interested reader (that's you, you're the interested reader 💖) has probably clocked a bunch of flags that are all about encodings and codesets: utf8, latin1 and ascii. There's like a lot of confusion about what these actually do, so here's a short comparison:

utf8 controls whether the JSON text created by encode (and expected by decode) is UTF-8 encoded or not. Meanwhile, latin1 and ascii only control whether encode escapes character values that fall outside their respective codeset range. None of these flags conflict with each other — although ngl, some combinations make way less sense than others 🙈

Care has been taken to make all the flags symmetrical with respect to encode and decode, meaning texts encoded with any combination of these flag values will be correctly decoded when the same flags are used. Generally speaking, if you're using different flag settings when encoding vs. when decoding, you prob have a bug somewhere, no cap.

Below comes a verbose discussion of these flags ⬇️ Note that a "codeset" is simply an abstract set of character-codepoint pairs, while an encoding takes those codepoint numbers and encodes them — in our case, into octets. Unicode is (among other things) a codeset, UTF-8 is an encoding, and ISO-8859-1 (= latin 1) and ASCII are both codesets and encodings at the same time, which is genuinely so confusing of them.

utf8 flag disabled

When utf8 is disabled (that's the default), then encode/decode generate and expect Unicode strings. Translation: characters with high ordinal Unicode values (> 255) will be encoded as such characters, and likewise such characters get decoded as-is — no changes done to them at all, except "(re-)interpreting" them as Unicode codepoints or Unicode characters, respectively (to Perl, these are the same thing in strings unless you do funny/weird/dumb stuff 😭).

This is useful when you want to do the encoding yourself (e.g. when you want to have UTF-16 encoded JSON texts) or when some other layer does the encoding for you. For example: when printing to a terminal using a filehandle that transparently encodes to UTF-8, you certainly do NOT want to UTF-8 encode your data first and then have Perl encode it another time. That's a double-encode, and it does not slay 💀

utf8 flag enabled

If the utf8-flag is enabled, encode/decode will encode all characters using the corresponding UTF-8 multi-byte sequence, and will expect your input strings to be encoded as UTF-8. Which means: no "character" of the input string must have any value > 255, because UTF-8 does not allow that.

So the utf8 flag switches between two modes: disabled means you get a Unicode string in Perl, enabled means you get a UTF-8 encoded octet/binary string in Perl. Two modes, two vibes, pick your fighter ✨

latin1 or ascii flags enabled

With latin1 (or ascii) enabled, encode will escape characters with ordinal values > 255 (> 127 with ascii) and encode the remaining characters as specified by the utf8 flag.

If utf8 is disabled, then the result is also correctly encoded in those character sets — because both are proper subsets of Unicode, meaning that a Unicode string with all character values < 256 is the same thing as a ISO-8859-1 string, and a Unicode string with all character values < 128 is the same thing as an ASCII string in Perl. Math is mathing 🧮

If utf8 is enabled, you still get a correct UTF-8-encoded string regardless of these flags — it's just that some more characters will be escaped using \uXXXX than before.

Heads up bestie 🫶 Note that ISO-8859-1-encoded strings are not compatible with UTF-8 encoding, while ASCII-encoded strings are. That's because the ISO-8859-1 encoding is NOT a subset of UTF-8 (despite the ISO-8859-1 codeset being a subset of Unicode), while ASCII is. Iconic of ASCII to be the easy one, honestly.

Surprisingly, decode will ignore these flags and so treat all input values as governed by the utf8 flag. If it's disabled, this allows you to decode ISO-8859-1- and ASCII-encoded strings, as both are strict subsets of Unicode. If it's enabled, you can correctly decode UTF-8 encoded strings.

So neither latin1 nor ascii is incompatible with the utf8 flag — they only govern when the JSON output engine escapes a character or not.

The main use for latin1 is to relatively efficiently store binary data as JSON, at the expense of breaking compatibility with most JSON decoders. Risky business, but sometimes you gotta 😌

The main use for ascii is to force the output to not contain characters with values > 127, which means you can interpret the resulting string as UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, ASCII, KOI8-R or most about any character set and 8-bit-encoding, and still get the same data structure back. This is useful when your channel for JSON transfer is not 8-bit clean or the encoding might get mangled in between (e.g. in mail). It works because ASCII is a proper subset of most 8-bit and multibyte encodings in use in the world. Universal donor energy fr fr 👑

🐛 BUGS 🐛

Please report bugs on a specific behavior of this module to RT or GitHub issues (preferred):

As for new features and requests to change common behaviors — please ask the author of JSON::XS (Marc Lehmann, <schmorp[at]schmorp.de>) first, by email (important!), so we keep compatibility among JSON.pm backends. Like, genuinely important, don't skip this step 🙏

Generally speaking, if you need something special for you, you're advised to create a new module — maybe based on JSON::Tiny, which is smaller and written in a much cleaner way than this module. Sometimes the move is just to make your own thing, and that's valid 💅

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Makamaka Hannyaharamitu, <makamaka[at]cpan.org>

🌟 CURRENT MAINTAINER 🌟

Kenichi Ishigaki, <ishigaki[at]cpan.org>

Copyright 2007-2016 by Makamaka Hannyaharamitu

Most of the documentation is taken from JSON::XS by Marc Lehmann

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

And that's the whole page, bestie!! 🫶✨ This one shipped as perl v5.42.3 and it's dated 2026-11-03 — like, from the future, main character energy honestly 🔥 Now go forth and parse some JSON, you absolute icon 💖🦋🌸

📦 where this page comes from