NAME
Data::Roundtrip - convert between Perl data structures, YAML and JSON
with unicode support (I believe ...)
VERSION
Version 0.14
SYNOPSIS
This module contains a collection of utilities for converting between
JSON, YAML, Perl variable and a Perl variable's string representation
(aka dump). Hopefully, all unicode content will be handled correctly
between the conversions and optionally escaped or un-escaped. Also JSON
can be presented in a pretty format or in a condensed, machine-readable
format (not spaces, indendation or line breaks).
use Data::Roundtrip qw/:all/;
#use Data::Roundtrip qw/json2yaml/;
#use Data::Roundtrip qw/:json/; # see EXPORT
$jsonstr = '{"Songname": "Απόκληρος της κοινωνίας",'
.'"Artist": "Καζαντζίδης Στέλιος/Βίρβος Κώστας"}'
;
$yamlstr = json2yaml($jsonstr);
print $yamlstr;
# NOTE: long strings have been broken into multilines
# and/or truncated (replaced with ...)
#---
#Artist: Καζαντζίδης Στέλιος/Βίρβος Κώστας
#Songname: Απόκληρος της κοινωνίας
$yamlstr = json2yaml($jsonstr, {'escape-unicode'=>1});
print $yamlstr;
#---
#Artist: \u039a\u03b1\u03b6\u03b1 ...
#Songname: \u0391\u03c0\u03cc\u03ba ...
$backtojson = yaml2json($yamlstr);
# $backtojson is a string representation
# of following JSON structure:
# {"Artist":"Καζαντζίδης Στέλιος/Βίρβος Κώστας",
# "Songname":"Απόκληρος της κοινωνίας"}
# This is useful when sending JSON via
# a POST request and it needs unicode escaped:
$backtojson = yaml2json($yamlstr, {'escape-unicode'=>1});
# $backtojson is a string representation
# of following JSON structure:
# but this time with unicode escaped
# (pod content truncated for readbility)
# {"Artist":"\u039a\u03b1\u03b6 ...",
# "Songname":"\u0391\u03c0\u03cc ..."}
# this is the usual Data::Dumper dump:
print json2dump($jsonstr);
#$VAR1 = {
# 'Songname' => "\x{391}\x{3c0}\x{3cc} ...",
# 'Artist' => "\x{39a}\x{3b1}\x{3b6} ...",
#};
# and this is a more human-readable version:
print json2dump($jsonstr, {'dont-bloody-escape-unicode'=>1});
# $VAR1 = {
# "Artist" => "Καζαντζίδης Στέλιος/Βίρβος Κώστας",
# "Songname" => "Απόκληρος της κοινωνίας"
# };
# pass some parameters to Data::Dumper
# like: be terse (no $VAR1):
print json2dump($jsonstr,
{'dont-bloody-escape-unicode'=>0, 'terse'=>1}
#{'dont-bloody-escape-unicode'=>0, 'terse'=>1, 'indent'=>0}
);
# {
# "Artist" => "Καζαντζίδης Στέλιος/Βίρβος Κώστας",
# "Songname" => "Απόκληρος της κοινωνίας"
# }
# this is how to reformat a JSON string to
# have its unicode content escaped:
my $json_with_unicode_escaped =
json2json($jsonstr, {'escape-unicode'=>1});
# For some of the above functions there exist command-line scripts:
perl2json.pl -i "perl-data-structure.pl" -o "output.json" --pretty
json2json.pl -i "with-unicode.json" -o "unicode-escaped.json" --escape-unicode
# etc.
# only for *2dump: perl2dump, json2dump, yaml2dump
# and if no escape-unicode is required (i.e.
# setting 'dont-bloody-escape-unicode' => 1 permanently)
# and if efficiency is important,
# meaning that perl2dump is run in a loop thousand of times,
# then import the module like this:
use Data::Roundtrip qw/:all no-unicode-escape-permanently/;
# or like this
use Data::Roundtrip qw/:all unicode-escape-permanently/;
# then perl2dump() is more efficient but unicode characters
# will be permanently not-escaped (1st case) or escaped (2nd case).
EXPORT
By default no symbols are exported. However, the following export tags
are available (:all will export all of them):
* :json : perl2json(), json2perl(), json2dump(), json2yaml(),
json2json()
* :yaml : perl2yaml(), yaml2perl(), yaml2dump(), yaml2yaml(),
yaml2json()
* :dump : perl2dump(), perl2dump_filtered(), perl2dump_homebrew(),
dump2perl(), dump2json(), dump2yaml()
* :io : read_from_file(), write_to_file(), read_from_filehandle(),
write_to_filehandle(),
* :all : everything above
* no-unicode-escape-permanently : this is not an export
keyword/parameter but a parameter which affects all the *2dump* subs
by setting unicode escaping permanently to false. See "EFFICIENCY".
* unicode-escape-permanently : this is not an export
keyword/parameter but a parameter which affects all the *2dump* subs
by setting unicode escaping permanently to true. See "EFFICIENCY".
EFFICIENCY
The export keyword/parameter no-unicode-escape-permanently affects all
the *2dump* subs by setting unicode escaping permanently to false. This
improves efficiency, although one will ever need to use this in extreme
situations where a *2dump* sub is called repeatedly in a loop of a few
hundreds or thousands of iterations or more.
Each time a *2dump* is called, the dont-bloody-escape-unicode flag is
checked and if it is set, then Data::Dumper's qquote() is overriden
with _qquote_redefinition_by_Corion() just for that instance and will
be restored as soon as the dump is finished. Similarly, a filter for
not escaping unicode is added to Data::Dump just for that particular
call and is removed immediately after. This has some computational cost
and can be avoided completely by overriding the sub and adding the
filter once, at loading (in import()).
The price to pay for this added efficiency is that unicode in any dump
will never be escaped (e.g. \x{3b1}), but will be rendered (e.g. α, a
greek alpha). Always. The option dont-bloody-escape-unicode will
permanently be set to true.
Similarly, the export keyword/parameter unicode-escape-permanently
affects all the *2dump* subs by setting unicode escaping permanently to
true. This improves efficiency as well.
See "BENCHMARKS" on how to find the fastest *2dump* sub.
BENCHMARKS
The special Makefile target benchmarks will time calls to each of the
*2dump* subs under
use Data::Roundtrip;
use Data::Roundtrip qw/no-unicode-escape-permanently/;
use Data::Roundtrip qw/unicode-escape-permanently/;
and for 'dont-bloody-escape-unicode' => 0 and
'dont-bloody-escape-unicode' => 1.
In general, "perl2dump" is faster by 25% when one of the permanent
import parameters is used (either of the last two cases above).
SUBROUTINES
perl2json
my $ret = perl2json($perlvar, $optional_paramshashref)
Arguments:
* $perlvar
* $optional_paramshashref
Return value:
* $ret
Given an input $perlvar (which can be a simple scalar or a nested data
structure, but not an object), it will return the equivalent JSON
string. In $optional_paramshashref one can specify whether to escape
unicode with 'escape-unicode' => 1 and/or prettify the returned result
with 'pretty' => 1. The output can be fed back to "json2perl" for
getting the Perl variable back.
Returns the JSON string on success or undef on failure.
json2perl
Arguments:
* $jsonstring
Return value:
* $ret
Given an input $jsonstring as a string, it will return the equivalent
Perl data structure using
JSON::decode_json(Encode::encode_utf8($jsonstring)).
Returns the Perl data structure on success or undef on failure.
perl2yaml
my $ret = perl2yaml($perlvar, $optional_paramshashref)
Arguments:
* $perlvar
* $optional_paramshashref
Return value:
* $ret
Given an input $perlvar (which can be a simple scalar or a nested data
structure, but not an object), it will return the equivalent YAML
string. In $optional_paramshashref one can specify whether to escape
unicode with 'escape-unicode' => 1. Prettify is not supported yet. The
output can fed to "yaml2perl" for getting the Perl variable back.
Returns the YAML string on success or undef on failure.
yaml2perl
my $ret = yaml2perl($yamlstring);
Arguments:
* $yamlstring
Return value:
* $ret
Given an input $yamlstring as a string, it will return the equivalent
Perl data structure using YAML::Load($yamlstring)
Returns the Perl data structure on success or undef on failure.
perl2dump
my $ret = perl2dump($perlvar, $optional_paramshashref)
Arguments:
* $perlvar
* $optional_paramshashref
Return value:
* $ret
Given an input $perlvar (which can be a simple scalar or a nested data
structure, but not an object), it will return the equivalent string
(via Data::Dumper). In $optional_paramshashref one can specify whether
to escape unicode with 'dont-bloody-escape-unicode' => 0, (or
'escape-unicode' => 1). The DEFAULT behaviour is to NOT ESCAPE unicode.
Additionally, use terse output with 'terse' => 1 and remove all the
incessant indentation with 'indent' => 1 which unfortunately goes to
the other extreme of producing a space-less output, not fit for human
consumption. The output can fed to "dump2perl" for getting the Perl
variable back.
It returns the string representation of the input perl variable on
success or undef on failure.
The output can be fed back to "dump2perl".
CAVEAT: when not escaping unicode (which is the default behaviour),
each call to this sub will override Data::Dumper's qquote() sub then
call Data::Dumper's Dumper() and save its output to a temporary
variable, restore qquote() sub to its original code ref and return the
contents. This exercise is done every time this perl2dump() is called.
It may be expensive. The alternative is to redefine qquote() once, when
the module is loaded, with all the side-effects this may cause.
Note that there are two other alternative subs which offer more-or-less
the same functionality and their output can be fed back to all the
dump2*() subs. These are "perl2dump_filtered" which uses
Data::Dump::Filtered to add a filter to control unicode escaping but
lacks in aesthetics and functionality and handling all the cases Dump
and Dumper do quite well.
There is also perl2dump_homebrew() which uses the same dump-recursively
engine as "perl2dump_filtered" but does not involve Data::Dump at all.
perl2dump_filtered
my $ret = perl2dump_filtered($perlvar, $optional_paramshashref)
Arguments:
* $perlvar
* $optional_paramshashref
Return value:
* $ret
It does the same job as "perl2dump" which is to stringify a perl
variable. And takes the same options.
It returns the string representation of the input perl variable on
success or undef on failure.
It uses Data::Dump::Filtered to add a filter to Data::Dump.
head3 CAVEAT
In order to xxx
perl2dump_homebrew
my $ret = perl2dump_homebrew($perlvar, $optional_paramshashref)
Arguments:
* $perlvar
* $optional_paramshashref
Return value:
* $ret
It does the same job as "perl2dump" which is to stringify a perl
variable. And takes the same options.
It returns the string representation of the input perl variable on
success or undef on failure.
The output can be fed back to "dump2perl".
It uses its own basic dumper. Which is recursive. So, beware of
extremely deep nested data structures. Deep not long! But it probably
is as efficient as it can be but definetely lacks in aesthetics and
functionality compared to Dump and Dumper.
dump_perl_var_recursively
my $ret = dump_perl_var_recursively($perl_var)
Arguments:
* $perl_var, a Perl variable like a scalar or an arbitrarily nested
data structure. For the latter, it requires references, e.g. hash-ref
or arrayref.
Return value:
* $ret, the stringified version of the input Perl variable.
This sub will take a Perl var (as a scalar or an arbitrarily nested
data structure) and emulate a very very basic Dump/Dumper but with
enforced rendering unicode (for keys or values or array items), and not
escaping unicode - this is not an option, it returns a string
representation of the input perl var
There are 2 obvious limitations:
1. indentation is very basic,
2. it supports only scalars, hashes and arrays, (which will dive into
them no problem) This sub can be used in conjuction with
DataDumpFilterino() to create a Data::Dump filter like,
Data::Dump::Filtered::add_dump_filter( \& DataDumpFilterino );
or
dumpf($perl_var, \& DataDumpFilterino);
the input is a Perl variable as a reference, so no %inp but $inp={}
and $inp=[].
This function is recursive. Beware of extremely deep nested data
structures. Deep not long! But it probably is as efficient as it can
be but definetely lacks in aesthetics and functionality compared to
Dump and Dumper.
The output is a, possibly multiline, string. Which it can then be fed
back to "dump2perl".
dump2perl
my $ret = dump2perl($dumpstring)
Arguments:
* $dumpstring, this comes from the output of Data::Dump, Data::Dumper
or our own "perl2dump", "perl2dump_filtered", "perl2dump_homebrew".
Escaped, or unescaped.
Return value:
* $ret, the Perl data structure on success or undef on failure.
json2perl
my $ret = json2perl($jsonstring)
Arguments:
* $jsonstring
Return value:
* $ret
Given an input $jsonstring as a string, it will return the equivalent
Perl data structure using
JSON::decode_json(Encode::encode_utf8($jsonstring)).
Returns the Perl data structure on success or undef on failure.
In $optional_paramshashref one can specify whether to escape unicode
with 'escape-unicode' => 1 and/or prettify the returned result with
'pretty' => 1.
Returns the yaml string on success or undef on failure.
json2yaml
my $ret = json2yaml($jsonstring, $optional_paramshashref)
Arguments:
* $jsonstring
* $optional_paramshashref
Return value:
* $ret
Given an input JSON string $jsonstring, it will return the equivalent
YAML string YAML by first converting JSON to a Perl variable and then
converting that variable to YAML using "perl2yaml". All the parameters
supported by "perl2yaml" are accepted.
Returns the YAML string on success or undef on failure.
yaml2json
my $ret = yaml2json($yamlstring, $optional_paramshashref)
Arguments:
* $yamlstring
* $optional_paramshashref
Return value:
* $ret
Given an input YAML string $yamlstring, it will return the equivalent
YAML string YAML by first converting YAML to a Perl variable and then
converting that variable to JSON using "perl2json". All the parameters
supported by "perl2json" are accepted.
Returns the JSON string on success or undef on failure.
json2json yaml2yaml
Transform a json or yaml string via pretty printing or via escaping
unicode or via un-escaping unicode. Parameters like above will be
accepted.
json2dump dump2json yaml2dump dump2yaml
similar functionality as their counterparts described above.
read_from_file
my $contents = read_from_file($filename)
Arguments:
* $filename : the input filename.
Return value:
* $contents
Given a filename, it opens it using :encoding(UTF-8), slurps its
contents and closes it. It's a convenience sub which could have also
been private. If you want to retain the filehandle, use
"read_from_filehandle".
Returns the file contents on success or undef on failure.
read_from_filehandle
my $contents = read_from_filehandle($filehandle)
Arguments:
* $filehandle : the handle to an already opened file.
Return value:
* $contents : the file contents slurped.
It slurps all content from the specified input file handle. Upon return
the file handle is still open. Returns the file contents on success or
undef on failure.
write_to_file
write_to_file($filename, $contents) or die
Arguments:
* $filename : the output filename.
* $contents : any string to write it to file.
Return value:
* 1 on success, 0 on failure
Given a filename, it opens it using :encoding(UTF-8), writes all
specified content and closes the file. It's a convenience sub which
could have also been private. If you want to retain the filehandle, use
"write_to_filehandle".
Returns 1 on success or 0 on failure.
write_to_filehandle
write_to_filehandle($filehandle, $contents) or die
Arguments:
* $filehandle : the handle to an already opened file (for writing).
Return value:
* 1 on success or 0 on failure.
It writes content to the specified file handle. Upon return the file
handle is still open.
Returns 1 on success or 0 on failure.
SCRIPTS
A few scripts have been put together and offer the functionality of
this module to the command line. They are part of this distribution and
can be found in the script directory.
These are: json2json.pl, json2yaml.pl, yaml2json.pl, json2perl.pl,
perl2json.pl, yaml2perl.pl
CAVEATS
A valid Perl variable may kill YAML::Load because of escapes and
quotes. For example this:
my $yamlstr = <<'EOS';
---
- 682224
- "\"w": 1
EOS
my $pv = eval { YAML::Load($yamlstr) };
if( $@ ){ die "failed(1): ". $@ }
# it's dead
Strangely, there is no problem for this:
my $yamlstr = <<'EOS';
---
- 682224
- "\"w"
EOS
# this is OK also:
# - \"w: 1
my $pv = eval { YAML::Load($yamlstr) };
if( $@ ){ die "failed(1): ". $@ }
# it's OK! still alive.
AUTHOR
Andreas Hadjiprocopis, <bliako at cpan.org> / <andreashad2 at
gmail.com>
BUGS
Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-data-roundtrip at
rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at
https://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Data-Roundtrip. I will
be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on
your bug as I make changes.
SEE ALSO
Convert JSON to Perl and back with unicode
<https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=11115241>
RFC: Perl<->JSON<->YAML<->Dumper : roundtripping and possibly with
unicode <https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=11115280>
SUPPORT
You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.
perldoc Data::Roundtrip
You can also look for information at:
* RT: CPAN's request tracker (report bugs here)
https://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Data-Roundtrip
* AnnoCPAN: Annotated CPAN documentation
http://annocpan.org/dist/Data-Roundtrip
* CPAN Ratings
https://cpanratings.perl.org/d/Data-Roundtrip
* Search CPAN
https://metacpan.org/release/Data-Roundtrip
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Several Monks at PerlMonks.org (in no particular order):
haukex <https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=830549>
Corion <https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=5348> (the
_qquote_redefinition_by_Corion() which harnesses Data::Dumper's
incessant unicode escaping)
kcott <https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=861371> (The EXPORT section among
other suggestions)
jwkrahn <https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=540414>
leszekdubiel <https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=1164259>
marto
<https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=324763>
and an anonymous monk
CPAN member Slaven Rezić (SREZIC) for testing the code and reporting
numerous problems.
DEDICATIONS
Almaz!
LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT
This software, EXCEPT the portions created by [Corion] @ Perlmonks and
[kcott] @ Perlmonks, is Copyright (c) 2020 by Andreas Hadjiprocopis.
This is free software, licensed under:
The Artistic License 2.0 (GPL Compatible)