Simple JSON

You what?

Scala has lots of libraries for parsing, rendering, searching and transforming JSON. While many of these are fully-featured and flexible, they are on occasion all rather complex to master. Simple JSON attempts to live up to its name - by providing a simple library for interacting with JSON from Scala.

How do I get it?

Simple JSON isn't available in any public repository yet. So just download the source and build it using SBT.

Show me some code!

Okay, okay, you're being quite pushy. Here we go...

Parsing and rendering

All parsing and rendering is String-based:

import net.chrisloy.json._

val json1 = Json.parse("""[1, 2, {"three" : 3}]""")
// JsonArray(List(JsonNumber(1.0), JsonNumber(2.0), JsonObject(Map(three -> JsonNumber(3.0)))))

val json2 = Json("a" -> 1, "b" -> "things", "c" -> -123.456)
// JsonObject(Map(a -> JsonNumber(1.0), b -> JsonString(things), c -> JsonNumber(-123.456)))

json1.render
// String = [1,2,{"three":3}]

json2.render
// String = {"a":1,"b":"things","c":-123.456}

If you really want them, there are some implicits lying around to do this for you:

import net.chrisloy.json._
import net.chrisloy.json.Json.Implicits._

val magicks: JsonValue = "a" :: 2 :: "finally" :: Nil
// JsonArray(List(JsonString(a), JsonNumber(2.0), JsonString(finally)))

Searching

Searching is support via an XPath-like syntax, which works on objects:

import net.chrisloy.json._

val obj = Json("a" -> "oranges", "b" -> ("lemon" :: "lemon" :: Nil))
// JsonObject(Map(a -> JsonString(oranges), b -> JsonArray(List(JsonString(lemon), JsonString(lemon)))))

obj / "a"
// JsonString(oranges)

obj / "b"
// JsonArray(List(JsonString(lemon), JsonString(lemon)))

obj / "c"
// JsonUndefined

This also works at arbitrary depth:

import net.chrisloy.json._

val obj = Json("a" -> Map("b" -> Map("c" -> Map("d" -> "xyz"))))
obj / "a" / "b" / "c" / "d"
// JsonString(xyz)

Hopefully that'll keep you quiet for now.

What next?

Upcoming features:

transformation of JSON
all that other good stuff