gen-json-parser

Generate JSON parsers for custom data structures.

Motivation

This project came about after realizing that JavaScript objects are not Maps. With a Map data-structure one should expect that for all keys k, adding a new entry at k cannot affect the existence of other entries. JavaScript objects do not have this property due to special keys such as "__proto__".

If you wish to treat JSON as a representation of data (for example, that a user may input) then you will want to avoid JSON.parse. What you want is to parse the JSON into data-structures that are appropriate to your solution.

Parser Results

Parse results are objects with a boolean status property. If parsing succeeds, the status is true and there is a value property associated with the parsed value. Otherwise the status is false with some information about the parse error.

Premade parsers

Setup:

var parse = require('gen-json-parser').parse;
var demo = '{ "foo": "bar", "key": [ 2, true, [ null ] ] }';

Identity

The identity parser translates JSON values to their JavaScript equivalents, except JSON objects are parsed into JavaScript arrays of pairs.

Example:

parse.Identity(demo);
> {
>   "status": true,
>   "value": [
>     [ "foo", "bar" ],
>     [ "key", [
>       2,
>       true,
>       [ null ]
>     ] ]
>   ]
> }

JValues

A JValue is a JavaScript object with two properties: tag and term.

tag is associated with a string value indicating a 'type', such as "boolean", "null", or "object".

term is associated with a value that has the type indicated by the tag string.

The JValues parser produces a JavaScript JValue. For example, the JSON "true" would map to the JavaScript value { "tag": "boolean", "term": true }.

Example:

parse.JValues(demo);
> {
>   "status": true,
>   "value": {
>     "tag": "object",
>     "term": [
>       [ "foo", { "tag": "string", "term": "bar" } ],
>       [ "key", {
>         "tag": "array",
>         "term": [
>           { "tag": "number", "term": 2 },
>           { "tag": "boolean", "term": true },
>           { "tag": "array", "term": [
>             { "tag": "null", "term": null }
>           ] }
>         ]
>       } ]
>     ]
>   }
> }
 

Custom parsers

To write a custom JSON parser, you must provide details of how to interpret each of the different JSON value types: null, boolean, string, number, array, object. If you do not provide an interpreter for a given type, then it will be a parse error for values of that type to appear in the JSON.

For example, to replicate the behaviour of JSON.parse, we could generate the following parser:

var generate = require('gen-json-parser').generate;
var id = function (v) { return v; };
 
var parseJSON = generate({
  null: id,
  boolean: id,
  string: id,
  number: id,
  array: id,
  object: function (pairs) {
    return pairs.reduce(function (acc, pair) {
      acc[pair[0]] = pair[1];
      return acc;
    }, {});
  }
});

Note that JSON.parse throws if there is a parse error, whereas this one will return an object with a status property associated with false.