NAME JSON::DWIW - JSON converter that Does What I Want SYNOPSIS my $json_obj = JSON::DWIW->new; my $data = $json_obj->from_json($json_str); my $str = $json_obj->to_json($data); my $data = JSON::DWIW->from_json($json_str); my $str = JSON:DWIW->to_json($data); DESCRIPTION Other JSON modules require setting several parameters before calling the conversion methods to do what I want. This module does things by default that I think should be done when working with JSON in Perl. This module also encodes and decodes faster than JSON.pm and JSON::Syck in my benchmarks. This means that any piece of data in Perl will get converted to something in JSON instead of throwing an exception. It also means that output will be strict JSON, while accepted input will be flexible, without having to set any options. Encoding Perl objects get encoded as their underlying data structure. For example, a blessed hash ref will be represented as an object in JSON, a blessed array will be represented as an array. etc. A reference to a scalar is dereferenced and represented as the scalar itself. Globs, filehandles, etc., get stringified. Decoding When decoding, null, true, and false become undef, 1, and 0, repectively. The parser is flexible in what it accepts and handles some things not in the JSON spec: quotes Both single and double quotes are allowed for quoting a string, e.g., [ "string1", 'string2' ] bare keys Object/hash keys can be bare if they look like an identifier, e.g., { var1: "myval1", var2: "myval2" } extra commas Extra commas in objects/hashes and arrays are ignored, e.g., [1,2,3,,,4,] becomes a 4 element array containing 1, 2, 3, and 4. METHODS my $json_str = to_json($data) Returns the JSON representation of $data (arbitrary datastructure). See http://www.json.org/ for details. Aliases: toJson, toJSON, objToJson my ($data, $error_msg) = from_json($json_str) Returns the Perl data structure for the given JSON string. The value for true becomes 1, false becomes 0, and null gets converted to undef. Called in list context, this method returns a where the first element is the data and the second element is the error message, if any. If $error_msg is defined, there was a problem parsing the JSON string, and $data will be undef. Aliases: fromJson, fromJSON, jsonToObj BENCHMARKS Latest benchmarks against JSON and JSON::Syck run on my MacBook Pro: Using a small data set: Encode (50000 iterations): ========================== Rate JSON JSON::Syck JSON::DWIW JSON 2670/s -- -72% -89% JSON::Syck 9416/s 253% -- -61% JSON::DWIW 24155/s 805% 157% -- Decode (50000 iterations): ========================== Rate JSON JSON::Syck JSON::DWIW JSON 2300/s -- -81% -93% JSON::Syck 12195/s 430% -- -64% JSON::DWIW 33784/s 1369% 177% -- Using a larger data set (8KB JSON string) generated from Yahoo! Local's search API (http://nanoref.com/yahooapis/mgPdGg) Encode (1000 iterations): ========================= Rate JSON JSON::Syck JSON::DWIW JSON 135/s -- -54% -74% JSON::Syck 290/s 115% -- -45% JSON::DWIW 526/s 291% 82% -- Decode (1000 iterations): ========================= Rate JSON JSON::Syck JSON::DWIW JSON 35.9/s -- -92% -94% JSON::Syck 444/s 1137% -- -25% JSON::DWIW 595/s 1557% 34% -- DEPENDENCIES Perl 5.6 or later AUTHOR Don Owens LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT Copyright (c) 2007 Don Owens . All rights reserved. This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See perlartistic. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. SEE ALSO JSON JSON::Syck (included in YAML::Syck) VERSION 0.03