Re: Jason is getting MARRIED!

From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2019-11-17 16:05:47

On 11/17/19 7:40 AM, Peter Dimov via Boost wrote:
> Bjorn Reese wrote:
> 
>> Should there be a JSON archive for Boost.Serialization?
> 
> There are many possible ways to write Boost.Serialization JSON archives, 
> depending on the JSON produced. You could for instance output structs as 
> `{ "x": 1, "y": 2 }`, or `[ "x", 1, "y", 2 ]`, or `[ 1, 2 ]`, or even `{ 
> "size": 3, "data": [ 1, 2 ] }`. 

> The first representation is the most natural and human-editable,

Human editable archives are something people ask for.  But it's not 
really possible in a general way because archives have to reflect the 
the C++ data structures that they correspond to.  If one want's to be 
able to edit data off line - better would be to start with a free 
standing archive design using something like google protocol buffers. 
Then you're into the normal trade offs regarding such libraries.

> but can't be deserialized incrementally ...

Which is pretty much a requirement for a generally function 
serialization system.

> Assuming we're talking about the first option, it should be possible to 
> use the proposed JSON library to implement a JSON input archive that 
> reads from a json::value. The output archive doesn't really need a library.

Implementing json for boost serialization should not be a target 
requirement for a json library which is meant to be simple, efficient, 
easy to use.

Implementing JSON for boost serialization wouldn't be very hard. I'm 
suprised that in 15? years no one has done it.  In fact no one has even 
asked for it!.  Were I to do it, I'd follow the design using boost 
spirit which has served me well for many years.  It's easy to maintain, 
relatively simple to implement, efficient enough so that no one has 
complained about when used for xml.  It turned xml serializaton ( a dumb 
concept I felt I had to implement) into a non-issue.

Robert Ramey

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