📡 Fix documentation gaps found in a full GitHub Discussions review

Reviewed all 1008 GitHub Discussions (2020-2026) for recurring questions
that better or more visible documentation would have avoided. Adds/expands
documentation for ~26 distinct gaps, including:

- New "Debugging" page collecting natvis, GDB pretty printer, LLDB status,
  and JSON_DIAGNOSTICS pointers (previously scattered/undiscoverable)
- Thread-safety and schema-validation FAQ entries
- StringType's char-based requirement (no wstring/u16string/u32string)
- Brace-initialization-yields-arrays warning directly on the constructor
  reference page (previously only in the FAQ, missed by users reading
  the constructor docs)
- std::any exclusion from get<T>(), with a manual-dispatch example
- Non-string-keyed std::map serializing as an array of pairs
- ordered_json compatibility with NLOHMANN_DEFINE_TYPE_* macros
  (already worked, was undocumented)
- std::array truncation on size-mismatched conversion (no exception)
- static_cast vs. get<std::optional<T>>() divergence
- Recipe for omitting a std::optional field instead of emitting null
- No built-in nesting-depth limit during parsing + a callback-based
  workaround recipe
- Recipe for streaming a large homogeneous array via parser callbacks
- operator>> stream-position semantics for concatenated JSON values
- JSON Pointer array-vs-object creation rule for non-existing paths
- CMake target name (nlohmann_json_modules) needed to link C++20 modules
- ESP-IDF/PlatformIO: no official package, link to a community fork
- get(key, default) as the Python dict.get() equivalent
- reserve() recipe for pre-allocating array capacity
- JSONC as an alias for the existing ignore_comments/ignore_trailing_commas
  combination (distinct from the unsupported JSON5)
- items() dereferenced-element type: decltype() idiom + detail-namespace
  stability caveat
- Various macro/type-conversion limitations (MSGPACK_DEFINE_ARRAY
  equivalent, char-array round-tripping, ADL serializer macro gap)

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>
This commit is contained in:
Niels Lohmann
2026-07-10 12:01:11 +02:00
parent 4d8e7a7210
commit 40f3caad4d
23 changed files with 369 additions and 3 deletions
@@ -124,6 +124,15 @@ Strong exception safety: if an exception occurs, the original value stays intact
filled with `#!json null`.
- The special value `-` is treated as a synonym for the index past the end.
!!! note "Creating intermediate levels that don't exist yet"
When the JSON pointer traverses intermediate levels that don't exist at all yet (not just a missing
leaf), each missing level is created as an array or an object depending on whether the corresponding
pointer token parses as a non-negative integer: a numeric token creates an array, a non-numeric token
creates an object. For example, on an initially `#!json null` value, `/foo/0/0/0` creates nested arrays,
while `/foo/one/one/one` creates nested objects. This is not specified by the JSON Pointer RFC; it is
this library's own, intentional disambiguation rule. See also [JSON Pointer](../../features/json_pointer.md).
## Examples
??? example "Example: (1) access specified array element"