Re: [Json] JSON Concluded? Well, maybe not

[Anders Rundgren <[e-mail]>]

On 2018-01-02 17:33, Richard Gibson wrote:

<snip>

> JSON.stringify assumes information that is explicitly not conveyed 
> by JSON (in which an object is "an unordered collection of zero or 
> more name/value pairs") [1], and both its number serialization [2]
> and string serialization [3] specify aspects that harm compatibility
> (the former having arbitrary value-dependent branches, the latter being
> capable of producing invalid UTF-8 octet sequences that represent unpaired
> surrogate code points—unacceptable for exchange outside of a closed
> ecosystem [4]). JSON is a general language-agnostic interchange format,
> and ECMAScript JSON.stringify is *not* a JSON canonicalization solution.
> 
> [1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8259#section-1
> [2]: http://ecma-international.org/ecma-262/7.0/#sec-tostring-applied-to-the-number-type
> [3]: http://ecma-international.org/ecma-262/7.0/#sec-quotejsonstring
> [4]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8259#section-8.1

JSON is a format defined the IETF and ECMA in some kind of cooperation.

ECMA's ECMAScript defines a set of ("fairly" easy to implement) JSON processing rules which are fully compatible [1] with the JSON format.

The idea using ES6+ number normalization was originally proposed by an esteemed member of the now concluded JOSE WG:
https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/jose/current/msg05323.html

Following that path, I (accidentally) discovered the "missing link", ES6+'s preservation [2] of the original property ordering which in my mind is quite logical [3] for "ordinary" JSON usage as well.

A Java based reference implementation has been successfully tested against Chrome, Node.js, Firefox and Safari.

Feel free taking a test ride on: https://mobilepki.org/jose-jcs/home
Note that it outlaws signing a JSON "Number" expressed as "1.0" since the correct (according to ES6+) representation is "1".

Anders

1] possibly with the exception of "unpaired surrogate code points" which I admittedly know zilch about
2] with properties named as integers as a for practical purposes insignificant exception
3] Making data come out in the order it was specified addresses human aspects like debugging and documentation of JSON data