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Building applications with JSON.awk

At a simple level JSON.awk can be used stand-alone to output so-called "jpaths" that describe an input JSON text. Then JSON.awk's output is piped through some text filter, which will arrange it in some way and realize an application.

However, with JSON.awk it is also possible to build applications by defining and including a set of callback functions that hook into parser and output events. With this callback interface writing applications that transform JSON text into some other programming language or data format can be more accurate and controlled but it requires writing bits of awk code.

Finally, more complex awk applications can embed JSON.awk source code to access the parser and process jpaths directly.

This document describes the callback interface. Note that if you run JSON.awk as a stand-alone filter you don't need to define or include callbacks (unless your platform uses mawk, see below).

Library

This repository includes a library of awk callbacks that were developed to solve various practical problems, and are fully worked-out source code examples of how to use the callback interface.

Callbacks

To use callbacks an application must:

  1. set global variable STREAM=0 before JSON.awk runs its main loop

  2. define the callback functions.

File callbacks.awk implements stubs of all required callback functions that your application can reuse or redefine as needed.

When STREAM=0 JSON.awk will modify its behavior as follows:

  • It will call callbacks for each JSON array, object or simple value that it is parsing.
  • It will not output jpaths to stdout but instead it will call callbacks to do so.
  • It will not report errors but instead it will call callbacks to do so.

More specifically, for an input JSON array the parser will call function cb_parse_array_enter on token [, followed by function cb_parse_array, and finally function cb_parse_array_exit on token ]. If the input array is empty, that is [], JSON.awk will call cb_parse_array_empty instead of cb_parse_array.

Similarly, for an input JSON object the parser will call four functions with _object replacing _array in the function names, and {,} replacing [,].

For printing output, JSON.awk will call functions cb_jpaths(JPATHS, NJPATHS), where JPATHS is an awk array of jpaths that represent the input JSON text, and NJPATHS is the array length. JPATHS will include non-leaf nodes when global variable BRIEF=0.

As the parser progresses through the parsing tree, JSON.awk will call function cb_append_jpath_component to format jpaths, and function cb_append_jpath_value when a JSON value for a given jpath is parsed. These two functions provide entry points for an application to generate a custom output syntax, e.g., translating the input JSON text into statements of any programming language, such as javascript, etc.

On encountering an error, JSON.awk will call function cb_fail1, If cb_fail1 returns a non-zero value then JSON.awk will print the error message to stderr, which is what JSON.awk does when STREAM=1. Note that JSON.awk prints error messages to stderr regardless of the value of variable STREAM.

JSON.awk's END action will call function cb_fails(FAILS, NFAILS), where FAILS is an awk associative array of error messages, if any, that JSON.awk accumulates while it parses JSON input, and NFAILS is the array length.

Callbacks can reference the following global variables:

  • FILEINDEX the integer index of the current input file (starts at 1)
  • CB_VALUE the JSON text of the parsed array or object
  • Any other global variable (see the awk source files).

Mawk

If you use mawk to run JSON.awk then you must always define callbacks even if you will not use them due to the way the mawk parser works. Practically, to run JSON.awk stand-alone with mawk use the following stanza:

mawk -f callbacks.awk -f JSON.awk file1.json [file2.json...]

This way callbacks will be defined to satisfy mawk's parser but they will not be called (unless you set STREAM=0).

Examples

Include and use the default callbacks as follows:

awk -f callbacks.awk -f JSON.awk -v STREAM=1 some-text.json

To define your own callbacks, copy file callbacks.awk to my-callbacks.awk, then edit the latter replacing the following function definitions:

function cb_jpaths(a,b){ print "jpaths",a[1],b }
function cb_fails(a, b){ for(b in a){ print "fail",b,a[b] }}
function cb_fail1(a){ }
BEGIN { BRIEF=0; STREAM=0 }

then run:

for i in 1 2 3; do echo "]$i" > /tmp/$i; done
for i in a b c; do echo "[\"$i\"]" > /tmp/$i; done

awk -f my-callbacks.awk -f JSON.awk /tmp/{1,a,2,b,3,c} 2>/dev/null

echo status = $?

Output:

jpaths [0]	"a" 2
jpaths [0]	"b" 2
jpaths [0]	"c" 2
fail /tmp/1 expected <value> but got <]> at input token 1
<<]>> 1
fail /tmp/2 expected <value> but got <]> at input token 1
<<]>> 2
fail /tmp/3 expected <value> but got <]> at input token 1
<<]>> 3
status = 0

If you want for your program to exit immediately with non-zero status when JSON.awk finds an error modify the previous example:

  function cb_fail1(m) { print m; STATUS=1; exit }
  END { exit(STATUS) }

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