[Question] Unescaped dump

[p-groarke]

I'm using jsonformoderncpp as a simple intermediary to traverse json and store it in another hierarchical format. All I need is strings for every key/value pair, regardless of their type. I use dump, which works as expected, but it adds escaped quotes to values.

Is their a way to get values "as is" without escaped quotes? get<std::string> can't work as it checks the json type is actually a string.

[jaredgrubb]

If I understand correctly, you want the JSON string representation of each value. You could just call value.dump() on each one right?

[p-groarke]

Yes that's what I'm doing, but dump() keeps quotes. What I'm looking for is serialization of the value.

Let me try to explain what I mean. Lets say I have the following :

{ "name" : "bob" }

dump() will output "bob". I'm looking to get bob without the quotes, as if you would deserialize to string. Does that make any sense?

I can do the parsing myself, I just want to make sure the capability to do this isn't already available so I don't take the perf hit of cleaning all the strings.

[jaredgrubb]

Let's be more concrete and include something where the difference matters.

Suppose you have the JSON string {"country": "\\u65e5\\u672c"}:

value.dump() will give type string "\\u65e5\\u672c" (14 bytes, all ASCII)
value.get<string>() will give you the string 日本 (6 bytes, UTF8)

Are you saying you want \\u65e5\\u672c (12 bytes, ASCII) (dropping the quotes, but keeping the JSON-style escaping)?

[p-groarke]

No, I would want the string "as-if deserialized and reserialized". So 日本, without quotes. However, I need this for every basic type as well (ints, floats etc).

So the setup :
db -> jsonformoderncpp, decomposes everything as string-> templating lib -> output

[p-groarke]

Just a note though, I would be ok with \\u65e5\\u672c without quotes, as I can always parse the utf8 myself or using another lib.

[gregmarr]

I remember another issue like this where the recommendation was to walk through the elements in the array/object, and if the type is string, use get<std::string>, and for anything else, use dump(). I was looking for that issue, but wasn't able to find it.

[gregmarr]

I think this is the one: #1181

[jaredgrubb]

If you need this for basic types too, then how are you going to distinguish the difference between the number 42 and the string "42"? For example, given the JSON object { "a": 42, "b": "42"}, the values are very different things and it sounds like you want the same two-byte string 42 for both values? Going even further, I am trying to imagine what you are hoping to get for an array of strings or, worse, and array that has strings and numbers. :)

But, yes, you would need to do this at a higher level by switching on the type; there is nothing in the library that does this (because it removes information that cannot be recovered).

[p-groarke]

I remember another issue like this where the recommendation was to walk through the elements in the array/object, and if the type is string, use get<std::string>, and for anything else, use dump(). I was looking for that issue, but wasn't able to find it.

Of course! That's perfect thx :)

To answer your question, the output is html. So 42 and "42" are going to be rendered the same way : 42. As far as I can tell there is no problem (I may be hallucinating, tbd ;) ). Note there is no processing happening, just rendering the values as text to html.