jsonish

This is a toy project in early development.

This library provides an extended json parser that supports some syntax conveniences, such as:

• bare words
• implicit string joins
• comments
• single quotes for strings

bare words

Bare words are allowed in place of quoted strings. For example the following syntax pairs are equivalent:

>>> jsonish.parse(r'[ hello    world ]')
[u'hello world']

Special characters (like ,) are not included in the bare word.

>>> jsonish.parse(r'[ hello, world ]')
[u'hello', u'world']

Bare words are allowed in array keys too

>>> jsonish.parse(r'{a:1, b:2}')
{u'a': 1, u'b': 2}

Bare words cannot contain any special characters ({}[]:,#'"), whitespace, or escaped characters. For such values, use a quoted string.

Also, bare words may not begin with a digit. This prevents poorly formatted numbers from being parsed as a bare word. For such values, use a quoted string.

>>> jsonish.parse(r'[ 00hi ]')
ValueError: Strings beginning with numbers must be quoted

Adjacent bare words are joined with a space, as are bare words adjacent to quoted strings.

implicit string joins

Much like in Python, two adjacent string values are implicitly joined. This is done with no separator if both are quoted strings. If either string is a bare word, then the values are joined with a space.

>>> jsonish.parse(r''' [ I "like " 'traffic' lights ]  ''')
[u'I like traffic lights']

comments

The hash character (#) marks the start of a comment, which continues until the end of line. All characters in comments are ignored.

>>> jsonish.parse(r'''
... {   name: Arthur,
...     title: King of the Britons,  # well, I didn't vote for him
...     address: Camelot,  # it's only a model
...     quest: To seek the Holy Grail,
... } ''')
{u'quest': u'To seek the Holy Grail', u'address': u'Camelot', u'name': u'Arthur', u'title': u'King of the Britons'}

single quoted strings

Quoted strings may use either single or double quotes, as long as they match. Either quotation mark may be escaped in strings, regardless of the quote used.

>>> jsonish.parse(r''' 'hello' ''')
u'hello'
>>> jsonish.parse(r''' "hello" ''')
u'hello'

other conveniences

• trailing commas are allowed in lists and dictionaries
• accepts broader numeric formats
• control characters allowed in strings