https://github.com/seagreen/son

Work in progress. Best alternative: https://matrix.org/docs/spec/appendices.html#canonical-json
https://github.com/seagreen/son

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Work in progress. Best alternative: https://matrix.org/docs/spec/appendices.html#canonical-json

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/seagreen/son
• Owner: seagreen
• Created: 2017-01-31T21:34:31.000Z (almost 8 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2019-12-23T18:56:29.000Z (almost 5 years ago)
• Last Synced: 2024-12-09T01:12:12.356Z (14 days ago)
• Language: Haskell
• Homepage:
• Size: 220 KB
• Stars: 358
• Watchers: 12
• Forks: 7
• Open Issues: 9
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md

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README

        
# Son

A subset of JSON.

JSON contains redundant syntax such as allowing both `10e2` and `10E2`. This helps when writing it by hand but isn't good for machine-to-machine communication. Piping JSON through multiple programs creates lots of trivial changes, which makes it hard to do things like take meaningful diffs.

Son is a subset of JSON without redundant options. It's intended for machine-to-machine communication by programs that want to follow [Postel's Law](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc761#section-2.10) -- they can accept normal JSON for flexibility and output Son for consistency.

## Son Numbers

![Number](./diagrams/png/number.png)

+ No exponential notation

+ No trailing zeros in fractions

+ No negative zero

+ No positive sign

### positiveInteger:

![Positive Integer](./diagrams/png/positiveInteger.png)

### fraction:

![Fraction](./diagrams/png/fraction.png)

## Son Strings

![String](./diagrams/png/string.png)

+ No unnecessary escape sequences

JSON doesn't allow Unicode characters below codepoint x20 or unescaped `"` and `\` in strings. To allow these to still be encoded in JSON we've had to keep a few escape sequences. We use two-character escape sequences (e.g. `\n`) when available, and six-character ones (e.g. `\u0001`) when not.

### shortcutEscape:

![shortcutEscape](./diagrams/png/shortcutEscape.png)

## Other Changes from JSON

+ No insignificant whitespace

# Status

Unreleased. Like JSON, the intention is that once Son is released it will never change.

# Specification

The formal part of its specification is [./son.ebnf](./son.ebnf). It uses the EBNF notation described [here](https://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xml11-20040204/#sec-notation).

Additionally:

+ The only valid byte encoding of Son is UTF-8. Byte order marks are forbidden.

+ Object keys must be unique.

+ Object members must be sorted by ascending lexicographic order of their keys.

# Implementations

+ Haskell reference implementation: [./implementation](./implementation).

# Special Thanks

+ [@chmike](https://github.com/chmike) and [@etherealvisage](https://github.com/etherealvisage): key ordering should specify "ascending".

+ [@John-Nagle](https://github.com/John-Nagle): UTF-8 should be the only allowed encoding.

# Differences between this and related projects

See [here](https://housejeffries.com/page/7).

# Notes

+ The diagrams were generated with [GrammKit](https://github.com/dundalek/GrammKit).

+ `./vendored/rfc7159.txt` is from [here](https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc7159.txt).