2 ms·

I'm confused about your stringify suggestion... I think the primary use of json.stringify is to send that JSON to some API or back to a browser, but nobody else

by smarx 14y ago

I'm confused about your stringify suggestion... I think the primary use of json.stringify is to send that JSON to some API or back to a browser, but nobody else would be able to make sense of the ":1". Am I misunderstanding? We don't run an SMTP server, so the email (port 25 traffic) comes from our servers but not from our SMTP server. Even still, we will probably have to limit port 25 use to avoid blacklisting. We're sorting that out.

chalst 14y ago
OK, but who will make sense of encoding the array {2,3,5} by the object {"1"=2, "2"=3, "3"=5}? Shouldn't you be trying to represent arrays by arrays? How about representing Lua tables by arrays with an object in position 0? Then { 11, ["11']=11} would map to [{"11"=11}, 11]. The extra layer of depth is annoying, but the semantics is closer to what you want and you avoid collisions between strings and array indices.
- smarx 14y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean. json.stringify {2,3,5} == '[2, 3, 5]', which is correct, isn't it? (Strictly, JSON has to always have a dictionary on the outside, but it's fairly standard to allow this.) We'll keep thinking about this, but I don't think it's sensible to try to encode {11, ["11"]=11} at all. That's neither an array nor a dictionary, and so it doesn't have a natural JSON representation. I'm inclined to make it an error, but right now we try to be generous in attempting to encode.
  - johns 14y ago
    JSON does not have to have a dictionary at the root. You can have just an array.
    - smarx 14y ago
      Looks like you're right. From http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4627.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4627.txt: "A JSON text is a serialized object or array." Now I don't know why I thought this wasn't allowed.
  - chalst 14y ago
    I had misunderstood the semantics of json.stringify - I thought tables always mapped onto dictionary objects, even if they were arrays. The semantics I suggested is an invertible way of handling that, though the inverse will be odd for JSON arrays whose 0th element is a dictionary object. Flagging errors in cases with seems to be a good way to handle this kind of problematic input. It's surely better than having applications have nonsensical data if they are given peculiar input.

by smarx 14y ago

chalst 14y ago

OK, but who will make sense of encoding the array {2,3,5} by the object {"1"=2, "2"=3, "3"=5}? Shouldn't you be trying to represent arrays by arrays? How about representing Lua tables by arrays with an object in position 0? Then { 11, ["11']=11} would map to [{"11"=11}, 11]. The extra layer of depth is annoying, but the semantics is closer to what you want and you avoid collisions between strings and array indices.

smarx 14y ago
I'm not sure what you mean. json.stringify {2,3,5} == '[2, 3, 5]', which is correct, isn't it? (Strictly, JSON has to always have a dictionary on the outside, but it's fairly standard to allow this.) We'll keep thinking about this, but I don't think it's sensible to try to encode {11, ["11"]=11} at all. That's neither an array nor a dictionary, and so it doesn't have a natural JSON representation. I'm inclined to make it an error, but right now we try to be generous in attempting to encode.
- johns 14y ago
  JSON does not have to have a dictionary at the root. You can have just an array.
  - smarx 14y ago
    Looks like you're right. From http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4627.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4627.txt: "A JSON text is a serialized object or array." Now I don't know why I thought this wasn't allowed.
- chalst 14y ago
  I had misunderstood the semantics of json.stringify - I thought tables always mapped onto dictionary objects, even if they were arrays. The semantics I suggested is an invertible way of handling that, though the inverse will be odd for JSON arrays whose 0th element is a dictionary object. Flagging errors in cases with seems to be a good way to handle this kind of problematic input. It's surely better than having applications have nonsensical data if they are given peculiar input.