[boost] JSON Parser GSoC 2013 (part 2)

Subject: [boost] JSON Parser GSoC 2013 (part 2)
From: Stephan Bourgeois (stephanb2_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-04-12 16:58:14

Hi everybody,
thank you for all your replies. I will try to summarize my impressions so
far:

   1. Although there is a solution in Boost.PropertyTree, a majority of
   users consider it to be incomplete, and quite a few developers are using
   external libraries at present.

   2. As Bjorn Reese pointed out, a solution should offer several different
   interfaces. Some being already implemented in the protoc library. Michael
   Marcin suggested that something similar to JsonFX in C# be added to Bjorn's
   list.

   3. There is already a Lexer implementation as part of the tokenizer API
   in protoc.

This is how I imagine I could contribute to the project:

   1. Collect requirements for functionality and interfaces.
   2. review existing Java, C++, C#, Android library solutions.
   3. Write a Parser with error recovery using the Lexer from the protoc
   library. Or adapt an existing parser if there is a good reason for doing so.
   4. review JSON specific issues like type casting and how to deserialize
   arrays with multiple types. (see posts by Arindam Mukherjee and Michael
   Marcin on deserialization)
   5. With the help of my mentor, implement the different interfaces,
   preferably in a modular way. (I know an example of this in compiler design
   using the visitor pattern for code generation)

Please don't be offended as I only had the time to have a quick look at a
single library. I understand that I need to look at a wider code base from
other libraries and familiarize myself with general issues related to JSON
and serialization.

Bjorn Reese offered to mentor this project, please let us know if someone
more "officially involved" with Boost needs to approve this.

Please let me know what you think.
Stephan