Re: [Json] On flat vs nested JSON encoding style

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Feb 4, 2016 at 10:39 AM, Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Anders Rundgren wrote:
>> Anyway, isn't CBOR what people are targeting for constrained devices?
>
> Yes, but the desire to be able to do sequential (as opposed to
> DOM-based) processing goes beyond constrained devices.

Exactly. Every device is constrained when you send it a big enough problem.

I did think of mentioning CBOR but for another reason. A lot of times
you are going to want to apply a protocol that has already been
designed for JSON to a constrained device. This is one of the reasons
I argued that there should have been a WG to design an efficient
binary encoding. My objective was to be able to indicate the 'binary'
version by specifying application/json-b without having to make any
other change.

I think it likely that people will want to do the same with CBOR. But
that is a lot harder if doing so requires the structure of the parse
tree to be 'messed about'.

I would much rather that we have a style guide that guides people
towards an approach that is flexible.


Carsten's example does demonstrate a more general version of the same
problem. But I don't think it is quite as critical. Because what I am
talking about here is mapping JSON data to objects in strongly typed
languages. And all the strongly typed declarative languages I am
familiar with (and I know a very large number) have a type system that
can be reduced to text label.

[Yes, I did functional programing, we did Orwell. But I have yet to
unpack a widely used open source tool to find that it was written in
F#, Oberon, or any other from that family]