JsonCons.JsonPath 1.0.0

JsonCons.JsonPath

The JsonCons.JsonPath library complements the functionality of the System.Text.Json namespace with an implementation of JSONPath. It provides support for querying JsonDocument/JsonElement instances with code like this:

var selector = JsonSelector.Parse("$.books[?(@.price >= 22 && @.price < 30)]");

IList<JsonElement> elements = selector.Select(doc.RootElement);

It targets .Net Standard 2.1.

JSONPath is a loosely standardized syntax for querying JSON. The original JavaScript JSONPath is a creation of Stefan Goessner and is described here. Since the original, there have been many implementations in multiple languages, implementations that differ in significant ways. For an exhaustive comparison of differences, see Christoph Burgmer's JSONPath comparison.

The JsonCons implementation attempts to preseve the essential flavor of JSONPath. Where implementations differ, it generally takes into account the consensus as established in the JSONPath comparison. It supports the familar queries against Stefan Goessner's store:

In addition, JsonCons.JsonPath incorporates some generalizations and tightening of syntax introduced in the more innovative and formally specified implementations.

• Unquoted names follow the same rules for the selector and in filter expressions, and forbid characters such as hyphens that cause difficulties in expressions.

• Names in the dot notation may be unquoted, single-quoted, or double-quoted.

• Names in the square bracket notation may be single-quoted or double-quoted.

• Like PaesslerAG/jsonpath/ajson, filter expressions may omit the parentheses around the expression, as in $..book[?@.price<10].

• Unions may have separate JSONPath selectors, e.g.

    $..[@.firstName,@.address.city]

• A parent selector ^, borrowed from JSONPath Plus, provides access to the parent node.

• Options are provided to exclude results corresponding to duplicate paths, and to sort results by paths.

The JsonCons implementation is described in an ABNF grammar with specification. It explicitly implements a state machine that corresponds to this grammar.

Documentation and examples may be found here:

• JsonCons JSONPath

• Reference

• Code examples

Acknowledgements

• Credit to Stefan Goessner's JsonPath, the original JSONPath. While not a formal specification, it was enormously influential.

• The specification of JsonCons.JsonPath draws heavily on Christoph Burgmer's JSONPath Comparison. Many of the test cases and some of the examples are borrowed from this resource.

• The specification of JsonCons.JsonPath filter expressions is greatly influenced by James Saryerwinnie's JMESPath, and largely follows JMSPath with regards to truthiness, comparator syntax and semantics, and function syntax and semantics. In Stefan Goessner's original article, filter expressions were left unspecified, and in their original implementations, they were simply Javascript or PHP.