Writing JSON schema to detect objects with duplicate names - json

According to the following post;
Does JSON syntax allow duplicate keys in an object?
Keys with the same name in JSON are valid, but most parsers will override the value with the last value it finds. Is there anyway in a json schema to detect duplicate names and throw an error? I want all json keys to have unique names in an object.

Json-schema works with valid JSON objects, so there is nothing it can do to prevent duplicate keys.
I would suggest you to use a jsonlint as a preprocess before validating with json-schema validator. It will depend on your programming language but here you have some choices:
javascript.
PHP
Python

Related

Sending raw JSON to GraphQL mutation

I need to upload through a GraphQL mutation an object whose schema is not known at design time. Basically it is a raw JSON blob that may or may not come from other, possibly non-GraphQL services. I am using JSON scalar from https://github.com/graphql-java/graphql-java-extended-scalars:
scalar JSON
input MyInput {
jsonField: JSON
}
It works nicely except when the input blob contains keys like "$ref", which is the standard way to describe references in JSON. However, field name $ref does not seem to be accepted as it does not conform to the GraphQL naming conventions.
Obvious solutions appear to be to encode-decode field names in some way, or send the whole JSON as a String, perhaps with a custom scalar type. But is there perhaps a more elegant way to achieve this?

Is it valid for JSON data structure to vary between a list and a boolean

The json data structure for jstree is define in https://github.com/vakata/jstree, here is an example
[ { "text" : "Root node", "children" : [ "Child node 1", "Child node 2" ] } ]
Notably it says
The children key can be used to add children to the branch, it should
be an array
However later on in section Populating the tree using AJAX and lazy loading nodes it shows to use set children to false to indicate when a child has not be processed
[{
"id":1,"text":"Root node","children":[
{"id":2,"text":"Child node 1","children":true},
{"id":3,"text":"Child node 2"}
]
}]
So here we see children used as both as an array and as a boolean
I am using jstree as an example because this is where I encountered the issue, but my question is really a general json question. My question is this, is it valid JSON for the same element in json to be two different types (an array and a boolean)
Structure wise, both are valid JSON packets. This is okay, as JSON is somewhat less stricter than XML(with a XSD or a DTD). As per: https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_json_objects.asp,
JSON objects are surrounded by curly braces {}.
JSON objects are written in key/value pairs.
Keys must be strings, and values must be a valid JSON data type (string, number, object, array, boolean or null).
Keys and values are separated by a colon.
Each key/value pair is separated by a comma.
Having said that, if the sender is allowed to send such JSONs, only caveat is that server side will have to handle this discrepancy upon receiving such different packets. This is a bad-looking-contract, and hence server might need to do extra work to manage it. Server side handling of such incoming JSON packets can become tricky.
See: How do I create JSON data structure when element can be different types in for use by
You could validate whether a JSON is okay or not at https://jsonlint.com/
See more about JSON in this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/4862511/945214
It is valid Json. JSON RFC 8259 defines a general syntax but it contains nothing that would allow a tool to identify that two equally named entries are meant to describe the same conceptual thing.
The need to have a criteria to check two JSON structures for instance equality has been one motivation to create something like Json Schema.
I also think it is not too unusual for javascript to provide this kind of mixed data. Sometimes it might help to explicitly convert the javascript object to JSON. Like in JSON.stringify(testObject)
A thing for json validation
https://www.npmjs.com/package/json-validation
https://davidwalsh.name/json-validation.

Parsing JSON with duplicate keys (json-cpp)

I'm using JsonCpp v0.6.0 to parse the following JSON string:
{
"3.7":"de305d54-75b4-431b-adb2-eb6b9e546011",
"3.7":"de305d54-75b4-431b-adb2-eb6b9e546012",
"3.8":"de305d54-75b4-431b-adb2-eb6b9e546013"
}
as follows:
Json::Value root;
Json::Reader reader;
// value contains the JSON string
if (!reader.parse(value, root, false))
{
// parse error
}
After the call to parse, root contains two entries in a map:
[0] first = "3.7", second = "de305d54-75b4-431b-adb2-eb6b9e546012",
[1] first = "3.8", second = "de305d54-75b4-431b-adb2-eb6b9e546013",
i.e. the first JSON record has been overwritten by the second. No errors are reported.
Is this behaviour expected? Is it correct?
I thought that an error might have been reported indicating that there is a duplicate key in the JSON string.
Like the JSON RFC sad the object names (keys) should be unique.
The names within an object SHOULD be unique.
Also the RFC defines if they are not, the behavior is unpredictable.
See this quote from the RFC:
An object whose names are all unique is interoperable in the sense
that all software implementations receiving that object will agree on
the name-value mappings. When the names within an object are not
unique, the behavior of software that receives such an object is
unpredictable. Many implementations report the last name/value pair
only. Other implementations report an error or fail to parse the
object, and some implementations report all of the name/value pairs,
including duplicates.
I agree with what you say, but I think JsonCpp tries to be a helpful tool, not something that tries to scrape by with minimal conformance to the RFCs.
It would make more sense if it either maintained the structure of the input stream, and supported duplicate keys, or (and this is what the OP and I'd expect) if it doesn't like it, to flag an error.
Silently changing the structure is unhelpful, as a check for the validity of the JSON input would have to be made with some other JSON tool prior to sending it to JsonCpp.

MySQL UDF for working with json?

Are there any good UDFs in MySQL to deal with json data, that supports the ability to retrieve a particular value in json (by dot notation key - EG: json_get('foo.bar.baz')) as well as the ability to set the value of a particular key - EG: json_set('foo.bar.baz', 'value')?
I found http://www.mysqludf.org/lib_mysqludf_json/ - but it seems to only provide the ability to create json data structures from non-json column values, as opposed to interacting with json column values.
This UDF is able to parse JSON and return the value of an attribute:
https://github.com/kazuho/mysql_json
This other one too: https://github.com/webaroo/mysql-json-udf

Are double definitions allowed in JSON, and if so, how should they be interpreted?

Is this valid JSON?
{
"name": "foo",
"name": "bar"
}
If so, how should it be interpreted?
It's technically legal, but strongly discouraged, according to the RFC:
The names within an object SHOULD be unique.
You can go one of two routes:
The JavaScript route: In JavaScript, this is illegal. Since JSON is supposed to be a subset, reject the input as invalid.
The Postel/Python route: Overwrite the "var" entry with the latest value.
According to RFC 4627, duplicate names are discouraged. See section 2.2. Objects:
The names within an object SHOULD be unique.
The above URL also refers us to RFC 2119, which specifies how the word SHOULD is interpreted:
SHOULD
This word, or the adjective "RECOMMENDED", mean that there
may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a
particular item, but the full implications must be understood and
carefully weighed before choosing a different course.
However, many parsers & JSON APIs implement this as SHOULD ALWAYS, and throw an error or ignore multiple values upon encountering duplicate properties. This includes jQuery.parseJSON() as well as .NET's JSON serialization.
It is not valid JSON as there are two name variables. Take a read of this to help you understand JSON a bit better.
JSon object, like any other object, can not have two attribute with same name. That's illegal in the same way as having same key twice in a map.
JSONObject would throw an exception if you have two keys with same name in one object. You may want to alter your object so that keys are not repeated under same object.
In this case the change would be to make your json key name have value as an array
No, is not. You have two attributes with the same label/name/title. Here is a very simple and short explanation of the JSON