4 ms·

Why is concatenated json a thing? In what sense is: {0}{1} better than [{0},{1}]? Presumably, if a few bytes are a major concern, you aren't using JSON anyway.

lucideer 7y ago
As another commenter said: streaming. To elaborate: {0}{1} is better than [{0},{1}] because, when streamed, {0} is still valid, while [{0}, is not.
spankalee 7y ago
Streaming is the prime use case.
PeterisP 7y ago
If you have a file or network stream with millions of separate JSON items, then you might want to parse and process each item separately as it is received, and the surrounding structure just gets in the way. That being said, it's properly better to explicitly acknowledge that you're using something-like-json-but-not-really-json like http://jsonlines.org http://jsonlines.org does instead of simply concatenating json objects.
- will4274 7y ago
  With the application understanding that the top level object is an array of independently parsable json objects, it should still be possible to stream the format I suggested, assuming you use a streaming / sax parser.
  - im3w1l 7y ago
    Streaming parsers are very inconvenient to work with.
- rurban 7y ago
  The delimiters don't get in the way, they protect you from MITM and other attacks. It's a security feature, not a bug.
cryptonector 7y ago
A non-online/non-streaming parser can parse [0][1] in an online/streaming way by first parsing one text ([0]) then the next ([1]), whereas it has to parse all of [[0],[1]] to produce a result. Similarly on the encoding side. Concatenated JSON is ambiguous, so you need to put some whitespace between any JSON texts where both aren't arrays or objects. This is a widely used technique.
2038AD 7y ago
When I was writing something (partly) as a learning exercise the easiest way to handle errors was to have an error handler on the server-side JSON encode any errors. The client-side JS would then split the string it got back on newlines and then parse each part. Each chunk of JSON had a field to say if it were an error message and if so the error would be logged to the browser console. I don't recommend, by any means, that people do this generally.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

lucideer 7y ago

As another commenter said: streaming. To elaborate: {0}{1} is better than [{0},{1}] because, when streamed, {0} is still valid, while [{0}, is not.

spankalee 7y ago

Streaming is the prime use case.

PeterisP 7y ago

If you have a file or network stream with millions of separate JSON items, then you might want to parse and process each item separately as it is received, and the surrounding structure just gets in the way. That being said, it's properly better to explicitly acknowledge that you're using something-like-json-but-not-really-json like http://jsonlines.org http://jsonlines.org does instead of simply concatenating json objects.

will4274 7y ago
With the application understanding that the top level object is an array of independently parsable json objects, it should still be possible to stream the format I suggested, assuming you use a streaming / sax parser.
- im3w1l 7y ago
  Streaming parsers are very inconvenient to work with.
rurban 7y ago
The delimiters don't get in the way, they protect you from MITM and other attacks. It's a security feature, not a bug.

cryptonector 7y ago

A non-online/non-streaming parser can parse [0][1] in an online/streaming way by first parsing one text ([0]) then the next ([1]), whereas it has to parse all of [[0],[1]] to produce a result. Similarly on the encoding side. Concatenated JSON is ambiguous, so you need to put some whitespace between any JSON texts where both aren't arrays or objects. This is a widely used technique.

2038AD 7y ago

When I was writing something (partly) as a learning exercise the easiest way to handle errors was to have an error handler on the server-side JSON encode any errors. The client-side JS would then split the string it got back on newlines and then parse each part. Each chunk of JSON had a field to say if it were an error message and if so the error would be logged to the browser console. I don't recommend, by any means, that people do this generally.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]