coreJSON Library

This repository contains the coreJSON library, a parser that strictly enforces the ECMA-404 JSON standard and is suitable for low memory footprint embedded devices. The coreJSON library is distributed under the MIT Open Source License.

This library has gone through code quality checks including verification that no function has a GNU Complexity score over 8, and checks against deviations from mandatory rules in the MISRA coding standard. Deviations from the MISRA C:2012 guidelines are documented under MISRA Deviations. This library has also undergone both static code analysis from Coverity static analysis, and validation of memory safety and proof of functional correctness through the CBMC automated reasoning tool.

Reference example

#include <stdio.h>
#include "core_json.h"

int main()
{
    // Variables used in this example.
    JSONStatus_t result;
    char buffer[] = "{\"foo\":\"abc\",\"bar\":{\"foo\":\"xyz\"}}";
    size_t bufferLength = sizeof( buffer ) - 1;
    char queryKey[] = "bar.foo";
    size_t queryKeyLength = sizeof( queryKey ) - 1;
    char * value;
    size_t valueLength;
    
    // Calling JSON_Validate() is not necessary if the document is guaranteed to be valid.
    result = JSON_Validate( buffer, bufferLength );
    
    if( result == JSONSuccess )
    {
        result = JSON_Search( buffer, bufferLength, queryKey, queryKeyLength, '.',
                              &value, &valueLength );
    }
    
    if( result == JSONSuccess )
    {
        // The pointer "value" will point to a location in the "buffer".
        char save = value[ valueLength ];
        // After saving the character, set it to a null byte for printing.
        value[ valueLength ] = '\0';
        // "Found: bar.foo -> xyz" will be printed.
        printf( "Found: %s -> %s\n", queryKey, value );
        // Restore the original character.
        value[ valueLength ] = save;
    }

    return 0;
}

A search may descend through nested objects when the queryKey contains matching key strings joined by a separator (e.g. .). In the example above, bar has the value {"foo":"xyz"}. Therefore, a search for query key bar.foo would output xyz.

Building coreJSON

A compiler that supports C89 or later such as gcc is required to build the library.

For instance, if the example above is copied to a file named example.c, gcc can be used like so:

gcc -I source/include example.c source/core_json.c -o example
./example

gcc can also produce an output file to be linked:

gcc -I source/include -c source/core_json.c

Generating documentation

The Doxygen references were created using Doxygen version 1.8.20. To generate the Doxygen pages, please run the following command from the root of this repository:

doxygen docs/doxygen/config.doxyfile

Building unit tests

Checkout Unity Submodule

By default, the submodules in this repository are configured with update=none in .gitmodules to avoid increasing clone time and disk space usage of other repositories (like amazon-freertos that submodule this repository.

To build unit tests, the submodule dependency of Unity is required. Use the following command to clone the submodule:

git submodule update --checkout --init --recursive --test/unit-test/Unity

Platform Prerequisites

• For running unit tests
  • C90 compiler like gcc
  • CMake 3.13.0 or later
  • Ruby 2.0.0 or later is additionally required for the Unity test framework (that we use).
• For running the coverage target, gcov is additionally required.

Steps to build Unit Tests

1. Go to the root directory of this repository. (Make sure that the Unity submodule is cloned as described above.)

2. Create build directory: mkdir build && cd build

3. Run cmake while inside build directory: cmake -S ../test

4. Run this command to build the library and unit tests: make all

5. The generated test executables will be present in build/bin/tests folder.

6. Run ctest to execute all tests and view the test run summary.