jsonut

A minimal utility kit for working with JSON in a typesafe manner.

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By default, Dart offers very little in the way of JSON parsing and serialization. While upcoming features like macros^1 are promising, they are not yet available (as of 2024-03-1). This package uses a (at the time of writing) new language feature, extension types to provide lightweight, type-safe JSON parsing:

import 'package:jsonut/jsonut.dart';

void main() {
  final string = '{"name": "John Doe", "age": 42}';
  final person = JsonObject.parse(string);
  print(person['name'].string()); // John Doe
  print(person['age'].number()); // 42
}

^1: Macros could be used to enhance this package once available!

Features

• 🦺 Typesafe: JSON parsing and serialization is type-safe and easy to use.
• 💨 Lightweight: No dependencies, code generation, or reflection.
• 💪🏽 Flexible: Parse lazily or validate eagerly, as needed.
• 🚫 No Bullshit: Use as little or as much as you need.

Getting Started

Simply add the package to your pubspec.yaml:

dependencies:
  jsonut: ^0.4.0

Or use the command line:

dart pub add jsonut

flutter packages add jsonut

Or, even just copy paste the code (a single .dart file) into your project:

curl -o lib/jsonut.dart https://raw.githubusercontent.com/matanlurey/jsonut/main/lib/jsonut.dart

Benchmarks

A basic decoding benchmark is included in the benchmark/ directory. To run it:

# JIT
dart run benchmark/decode.dart

# AOT
dart compile exe benchmark/decode.dart
./benchmark/decode.exe

On my machine™, a M2 MacBook Pro, there is roughly a <10% overhead compared to just using the object['...'] as ... pattern, or dynamic calls in JIT mode. In AOT mode, jsonut is faster than dynamic calls, and ~3% slower at decoding.

In short, the overhead is minimal compared to the benefits.

Contributing

We welcome contributions to this package!

Please file an issue before contributing larger changes.

This package uses repository specific tooling to enforce formatting, static analysis, and testing. Please run the following commands locally before submitting a pull request:

• ./dev.sh --packages packages/jsonut check
• ./dev.sh --packages packages/jsonut test