guile-json

guile-json is a JSON module for Guile. It supports parsing and building JSON documents according to the http://json.org specification.

• Complies with http://json.org specification.
• Builds JSON documents programmatically using scheme data types.
• Allows JSON pretty printing.

Installation

guile-json is freely available for download under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3) as well as the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 (LGPLv3).

Download the latest tarball and untar it:

• guile-json-1.0.1.tar.gz

If you are cloning the repository make sure you run this first:

$ autoreconf -vif

Then, run the typical sequence:

$ ./configure --prefix=<guile-prefix>
$ make
$ sudo make install

Where <guile-prefix> should preferably be the same as your system Guile installation directory (e.g. /usr).

If everything installed successfully you should be up and running:

$ guile
scheme@(guile-user)> (use-modules (json))
scheme@(guile-user)> (scm->json '(1 2 3))
[1, 2, 3]

It might be that you installed guile-json somewhere differently than your system’s Guile. If so, you need to indicate Guile where to find guile-json, for example:

$ GUILE_LOAD_PATH=/usr/local/share/guile/site guile

A pkg-list.scm file is also provided for users of the Guildhall/Dorodango packaging system.

Usage

guile-json provides a few procedures to parse and build a JSON document. A JSON document is transformed into or from native Guile values according to the following table:

JSON	Guile
string	string
number	number
object	hash-table*
array	list
true	#t
false	#f
null	#nil

Note (*): Association lists are also tranformed to JSON objects, in this case ordered will be preserved.

To start using guile-json procedures and macros you first need to load the module:

scheme@(guile-user)> (use-modules (json))

Procedures

• (json->scm #:optional port) : Reads a JSON document from the given port, or from the current input port if none is given.
  • port : is optional, it defaults to the current input port.
• (json-string->scm str) : Reads a JSON document from the given string.
• (scm->json native #:optional port #:key escape pretty) : Creates a JSON document from the given native Guile value. The JSON document is written into the given port, or to the current output port if non is given.
  • port : it defaults to the current output port.
  • escape : if true, the slash (/ solidus) character will be escaped.
  • pretty : if true, the JSON document will be pretty printed.
• (scm->json-string native #:key escape pretty) : Creates a JSON document from the given native Guile value into a string.
  • escape : if true, the slash (/ solidus) character will be escaped.
  • pretty : if true, the JSON document will be pretty printed.

Exceptions

A json-invalid exception is thrown if an error is found during the JSON parsing. Since version 0.2.0, the json-invalid exception has a single parser argument (see predicate and accessors below). The line or column where the error occured can be easily obtained from the parser port (calling port-line or port-column on the port).

• (json-parser? parser) : Tells whether the given argument is a JSON parser record type.
• (json-parser-port parser) : Get the port that the parser was reading from.

Examples

• Build the string “hello world”:

  scheme@(guile-user)> (scm->json "hello world ")
  "hello world"
      

• Build the [1, 2, 3] array:

  scheme@(guile-user)> (scm->json '(1 2 3))
  [1, 2, 3]
      

• Build the [1, 2, 3, 4] array using unquote-splicing:

  scheme@(guile-user)> (define values '(2 3))
  scheme@(guile-user)> (scm->json `(1 ,@values 4))
  [1, 2, 3, 4]
      

• Build the object { “project” : “foo”, “author” : “bar” } using an association list (see how symbols can also be used):

  scheme@(guile-user)> (scm->json '(("project" . "foo") (author . bar)))
  {"project" : "foo","author" : "bar"}
      

• Build again the same object { “project” : “foo”, “author” : “bar” } using a hash table:

  scheme@(guile-user)> (scm->json (alist->hash-table '((project . foo) (author . bar))))
  {"project" : "foo","author" : "bar"}
      

• Build the object { “values” : [ 234, 98.56 ] }:

  scheme@(guile-user)> (scm->json '(("values" 234 98.56)))
  {"values" : [234, 98.56]}
      

• Build the object { “values” : [ 234, 98.56 ] } again, this time using a variable:

  scheme@(guile-user)> (define values '(234 98.56))
  scheme@(guile-user)> (scm->json `(("values" ,@values)))
  {"values" : [234, 98.56]}