Prevent parsing a JSON node with common-lisp YASON library - json

I am using the Yason library in common-lisp, I want to parse a json string but would like the parser to keep one a its node unparsed.
Typically with an example like that:
{
"metadata1" : "mydata1",
"metadata2" : "mydata2",
"payload" : {...my long payload object},
"otherNodesToParse" : {...}
}
How can I set the yason parser to parse my json but skip the payload node and keep it as a string in the json format.
Use: let's say I just want the envelope data (everything that's not the payload), and to forward the payload as-is (as json string) to another system.
If I parse the whole json (so including payload) and then re-encode the payload to json, it is inefficient. The payload size could also be pretty big.

How do you know where the end of the payload object is in the stream? You do so by parsing the stream: if you don't parse the stream you simply can't know where the end of the object is: that's the nature of JSON's syntax (as it is the nature of CL's default syntax). For instance the only way you can know the difference between where to continue after
{x:1}
and after
{x:1.2}
is by parsing the two things.
So you must necessarily parse the whole thing.
So the answer to your question is: you can't do this.
You could (but not, I think, with YASON) decide that you did not want to build an object as a result of the parse. And perhaps, if the stream you are parsing corresponds to something with random access like a string or a file, you could note the start and end positions in the stream to later extract a string from it corresponding to the unparsed data (or you could perhaps build it up as you go).
It looks as if some or all of this might be possible with CL-JSON, but you'd have to work at it.
Unless the objects you are reading are vast the benefit of this seems questionable-to-none. If you really do want to do something like this efficiently you need a serialisation scheme which tells you how long things are.

Related

Swift unable to preserve order in String made from JSON for hash verification

We receive a JSON object from network along with a hash value of the object. In order to verify the hash we need to turn that JSON into a string and then make a hash out of it while preserving the order of the elements in the way they are in the JSON.
Say we have:
[
{"site1":
{"url":"https://this.is.site.com/",
"logoutURL":"",
"loadStart":[],
"loadStop":[{"someMore":"smthelse"}],
"there's_more": ... }
},
{"site2":
....
}
]
The Android app is able to get same hash value, and while debugging it we fed same simple string into both algorithms and were able to get out same hash out of it.
The difference that is there happens because of the fact that dictionaries are unordered structure.
While debugging we see that just before feeding a string into a hash algorithm, the string looks like the original JSON, just without the indentations, which means it preserves the order of items in it (on Android that is):
[{"site1":{"url":"https://this.is.site.com/", ...
While doing this with many approaches by now I'm not able to achieve the same: string that I get is different in order and therefore results in a different hash. Is there a way to achieve this?
UPDATE
It appears the problem is slightly different - thanks to #Rob Napier's answer below: I need a hash of only a part of incoming string (that has JSON in it), which means for getting that part I need to first parse it into JSON or struct, and after that - while getting the string value of it - the order of items is lost.
Using JSONSerialization and JSONDecoder (which uses JSONSerialization), it's not possible to reproduce the input data. But this isn't needed. What you're receiving is a string in the first place (as an NSData). Just don't get rid of it. You can parse the data into JSON without throwing away the data.
It is possible to create JSON parsers from scratch in Swift that maintain round-trip support (I have a sketch of such a thing at RNJSON). JSON isn't really that hard to parse. But what you're describing is a hash of "the thing you received." Not a hash of "the re-serialized JSON."

Generic JSON to XML transformation by templating

I'm trying to devise a service to convert a generic JSON data representation into XML data representation.
The first idea that came to my mind (and that I found on the internet) takes advantage of the Go templating utilities.
If I have a JSON data representation like the following:
{
"user": {
"name": "Luca",
"surname": "Rossi"
}
}
I could devise a template like the following:
<xml>
<user name="{{.user.name}}" surname="{{.user.surname}}" />
</xml>
to generate:
<xml>
<user name="Luca" surname="Rossi" />
</xml>
The problem is: Go requires the definition of a struct which declares how to marshal and unmarshal a JSON data representation; at the same time, however, I'd like to provide the template to generate the XML as a service configuration available at runtime.
The question is: "is it possible"?
I know (thanks tothis question) that I can take do something like this:
var anyJson map[string]interface{}
json.Unmarshal(bytes, &anyJson)
The problem comes when I have to access values: I'd be asked to do a type assertion, like
anyJson["id"].(string)
Now, I might be able to know the type of anyJson["id"] by means of JSON schema, for example, but I don't know if I can do a parametric type assertion, something like
anyJson["id"].(typeForIDFromJSONSchema)
When you unmarshal into map[string]interface{}, every nested JSON object will also be map[string]interface{}. So type assertions of the contained elements to string may typically work, but not to any struct type - the unmarshaller would always be unaware of your structs.
So the two options I suggest are
to do it 'the hard way' using type switches and type assertions - this is workable and fast, but not all that nice; or
to use a different tool such as jsoniter or gjson - these might be a little slower but they do allow you to traverse arbitrary JSON graphs
I have used both GJson and Jsoniter. GJson works by reading byte by byte through the input, using buffering to keep its speed up, providing an API that allows inspection of the current element and assertions to convert the values.
Jsoniter looks to me like a cleaner implementation along the lines of successful parsers in Java, but I haven't used it for parsing in this manner yet. (It can also be used simply as a fast drop-in replacement for the standard Go encoding/json.) I suggest you focus on using its Iterator and its WhatIsNext method.

Decode chunked JSON with AKKA Stream

I have a Source[ByteString, _] from an input file with 3 rows like this (in reality the input is a TCP socket with a continuos stream):
{"a":[2
33]
}
Now the problem is that I want to parse this into a Source[ChangeMessage,_], however the only examples I have found deals with when there is a whole JSON message for every row not when each JSON message can be fragmented over multiple rows.
One example I found is this this library, however it expects } or , as last character, that is one JSON per row. The example below shows this setup.
"My decoder" should "decode chunked json" in {
implicit val sys = ActorSystem("test")
implicit val mat = ActorMaterializer()
val file = Paths.get("chunked_json_stream.json")
val data = FileIO.fromPath(file)
.via(CirceStreamSupport.decode[ChangeMessage])
.runWith(TestSink.probe[ChangeMessage])
.request(1)
.expectComplete()
}
Another alternative would be to use a fold and balance } and only emit when a whole JSON is completed. The problem with this is that the fold operator only emits when the stream completes and since this is a continuous stream I can not use it here.
My question is: What is the fastest way to parse chunked JSON streams
in AKKA Stream and are there any available software that already does
this? If possible I would like to use circe
As documentation of knutwalker/akka-stream-json says:
This flow even supports parsing multiple json documents in whatever fragmentation they may arrive, which is great for consuming stream/sse based APIs.
In your case all you need to do is to just delimit the incoming ByteStrings:
"My decoder" should "decode chunked json" in {
implicit val sys = ActorSystem("test")
implicit val mat = ActorMaterializer()
val file = Paths.get("chunked_json_stream.json")
val sourceUnderTest =
FileIO.fromPath(file)
.via(Framing.delimiter(ByteString("\n"), 8192, allowTruncation = true))
.via(CirceStreamSupport.decode[ChangeMessage])
sourceUnderTest
.runWith(TestSink.probe[ChangeMessage])
.request(1)
.expectNext(ChangeMessage(List(233)))
.expectComplete()
}
That's because when reading from file, ByteString elements contain multiple lines and therefore Circe is not able to parse malformed jsons. When you delimit by new line, each element in the stream is a separate line and therefore Circe is able to parse it using the aformentioned feature.
Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any Scala libraries which support stream-based parsing of JSON. It seems to me that some support for this is available in Google Gson, but I'm not entirely sure it can properly handle "broken" input.
What you can do, however, is to collect JSON documents in a streaming fashion, similarly to what Framing.delimiter does. This is very similar to the alternative you have mentioned, but it is not using fold(); if you do go this way, you would probably need to mimic what Framing.delimiter does but instead of looking for a single delimiter, you will need to balance curly braces (and optionally brackets, if top-level arrays are possible), buffering the intermediate data, until the entire document comes through, which you would emit as a single chunk suitable for parsing.
Just as a side note, an appropriate interface for a streaming JSON parser suitable to be used in Akka Streams could look like this:
trait Parser {
def update(data: Array[Byte]) // or String
def pull(): Option[Either[Error, JsonEvent]]
}
where pull() returns None if it can't read anymore but there are no actual syntactic errors in the incoming document, and JsonEvent is some standard structure for describing events of streaming parsers (i.e. a sealed trait with subclasses like BeginObject, BeginArray, EndObject, EndArray, String, etc.). If you find such a library or create one, you can use it to parse data coming from an Akka stream of ByteStrings.

name json variable and jsonString variable convention?

JSON could mean JSON type or json string.
It starts confuse me when different library use json in two different meanings.
I wonder how other people name those variables differently.
For all practical purposes, "JSON" has exactly one meaning, which is a string representing a JavaScript object following certain specific syntax.
JSON is parsed into a JavaScript object using JSON.parse, and an JavaScript object is converted into a JSON string using JSON.stringify.
The problem is that all too many people have gotten into the bad habit of referring to plain old JavaScript objects as JSON. That is either confused or sloppy or both. {a: 1} is a JS object. '{"a": 1}' is a JSON string.
In the same vein, many people use variable names like json to refer to JavaScript objects derived from JSON. For example:
$.getJSON('foo.php') . then(function(json) { ...
In the above case, the variable name json is ill-advised. The actual payload returned from the server is a JSON string, but internally $.getJSON has already transformed that into a plain old JavaScript object, which is what is being passed to the then handler. Therefore, it would be preferable to use the variable name data, for example.
If a library uses the term "json" to refer to things which are not JSON, but actually are JavaScript objects, it is a mark of poor design, and I'd suggest looking around for a different library.

Is it valid to define functions in JSON results?

Part of a website's JSON response had this (... added for context):
{..., now:function(){return(new Date).getTime()}, ...}
Is adding anonymous functions to JSON valid? I would expect each time you access 'time' to return a different value.
No.
JSON is purely meant to be a data description language. As noted on http://www.json.org, it is a "lightweight data-interchange format." - not a programming language.
Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON, the "basic types" supported are:
Number (integer, real, or floating
point)
String (double-quoted Unicode
with backslash escaping)
Boolean
(true and false)
Array (an ordered
sequence of values, comma-separated
and enclosed in square brackets)
Object (collection of key:value
pairs, comma-separated and enclosed
in curly braces)
null
The problem is that JSON as a data definition language evolved out of JSON as a JavaScript Object Notation. Since Javascript supports eval on JSON, it is legitimate to put JSON code inside JSON (in that use-case). If you're using JSON to pass data remotely, then I would say it is bad practice to put methods in the JSON because you may not have modeled your client-server interaction well. And, further, when wishing to use JSON as a data description language I would say you could get yourself into trouble by embedding methods because some JSON parsers were written with only data description in mind and may not support method definitions in the structure.
Wikipedia JSON entry makes a good case for not including methods in JSON, citing security concerns:
Unless you absolutely trust the source of the text, and you have a need to parse and accept text that is not strictly JSON compliant, you should avoid eval() and use JSON.parse() or another JSON specific parser instead. A JSON parser will recognize only JSON text and will reject other text, which could contain malevolent JavaScript. In browsers that provide native JSON support, JSON parsers are also much faster than eval. It is expected that native JSON support will be included in the next ECMAScript standard.
Let's quote one of the spec's - https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7159#section-12
The The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Data Interchange Format Specification states:
JSON is a subset of JavaScript but excludes assignment and invocation.
Since JSON's syntax is borrowed from JavaScript, it is possible to
use that language's "eval()" function to parse JSON texts. This
generally constitutes an unacceptable security risk, since the text
could contain executable code along with data declarations. The same
consideration applies to the use of eval()-like functions in any
other programming language in which JSON texts conform to that
language's syntax.
So all answers which state, that functions are not part of the JSON standard are correct.
The official answer is: No, it is not valid to define functions in JSON results!
The answer could be yes, because "code is data" and "data is code".
Even if JSON is used as a language independent data serialization format, a tunneling of "code" through other types will work.
A JSON string might be used to pass a JS function to the client-side browser for execution.
[{"data":[["1","2"],["3","4"]],"aFunction":"function(){return \"foo bar\";}"}]
This leads to question's like: How to "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/939326/execute-javascript-code-stored-as-a-string".
Be prepared, to raise your "eval() is evil" flag and stick your "do not tunnel functions through JSON" flag next to it.
It is not standard as far as I know. A quick look at http://json.org/ confirms this.
Nope, definitely not.
If you use a decent JSON serializer, it won't let you serialize a function like that. It's a valid OBJECT, but not valid JSON. Whatever that website's intent, it's not sending valid JSON.
JSON explicitly excludes functions because it isn't meant to be a JavaScript-only data
structure (despite the JS in the name).
A short answer is NO...
JSON is a text format that is completely language independent but uses
conventions that are familiar to programmers of the C-family of
languages, including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, and
many others. These properties make JSON an ideal data-interchange
language.
Look at the reason why:
When exchanging data between a browser and a server, the data can only
be text.
JSON is text, and we can convert any JavaScript object into JSON, and
send JSON to the server.
We can also convert any JSON received from the server into JavaScript
objects.
This way we can work with the data as JavaScript objects, with no
complicated parsing and translations.
But wait...
There is still ways to store your function, it's widely not recommended to that, but still possible:
We said, you can save a string... how about converting your function to a string then?
const data = {func: '()=>"a FUNC"'};
Then you can stringify data using JSON.stringify(data) and then using JSON.parse to parse it (if this step needed)...
And eval to execute a string function (before doing that, just let you know using eval widely not recommended):
eval(data.func)(); //return "a FUNC"
Via using NodeJS (commonJS syntax) I was able to get this type of functionality working, I originally had just a JSON structure inside some external JS file, but I wanted that structure to be more of a Class, with methods that could be decided at run time.
The declaration of 'Executor' in myJSON is not required.
var myJSON = {
"Hello": "World",
"Executor": ""
}
module.exports = {
init: () => { return { ...myJSON, "Executor": (first, last) => { return first + last } } }
}
Function expressions in the JSON are completely possible, just do not forget to wrap it in double quotes. Here is an example taken from noSQL database design:
{
"_id": "_design/testdb",
"views": {
"byName": {
"map": "function(doc){if(doc.name){emit(doc.name,doc.code)}}"
}
}
}
although eval is not recommended, this works:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<h2>Convert a string written in JSON format, into a JavaScript function.</h2>
<p id="demo"></p>
<script>
function test(val){return val + " it's OK;}
var someVar = "yup";
var myObj = { "func": "test(someVar);" };
document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML = eval(myObj.func);
</script>
</body>
</html>
Leave the quotes off...
var a = {"b":function(){alert('hello world');} };
a.b();