Review and extend the documentation, and check it in CI (#5638)

* Review and extend the documentation, and check it in CI

A review of all documentation pages found factual errors, dead links,
missing cross-references, and gaps in examples. This fixes them and adds
checks so the same problems are caught automatically.

Fixes:
- wrong signatures and version histories (operator!= C++20 member,
  binary() subtype type, get<PointerType>(), JSON_NO_THREAD_LOCAL, ...)
- stale descriptions (number parsing since #5283, UBJSON table, SAX
  example that no longer compiled, tsl::ordered_map advice)
- dead internal and external links; repology.org badges (the domain is
  suspended) replaced by badges that query the registries directly
- deprecation notes link the migration guide; the guide itself fixed

Additions:
- "See also" sections, cross-references, 25 runnable examples, 12
  Mermaid diagrams, new API pages for json_pointer::operator<=> and
  byte_container_with_subtype::operator==/!=
- landing page, guides for untrusted input and performance
- "unreleased" badge after versions newer than the latest release

Checks:
- strict documentation build (broken links/anchors fail it); CI and
  the publish workflow fetch the full history the build needs
- weekly external link check, Mermaid syntax check in CI
- check_structure.py: example titles, heading levels, alt texts,
  header links, docset index coverage; its unused-example check works
  again
- all examples produce the same output on every platform

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Keep the customer links that could not be fixed

A dead link on the customers page is still the evidence of where the
use of the library was documented. Keep the original URLs of the entries
without a working replacement (Marne, Cisco Webex Desk Camera, Philips
Hue, CyberArk) and exclude exactly these URLs from the link check.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Correct the duplicate-key recipe's claim about SAX positions

The SAX interface's key() receives no position either; only parse_error()
does. Also note that the recipe does not report the path to the repeated
key (see discussion #5085).

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Say the library is available as a single header and mention json_fwd.hpp

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Correct documentation errors found while hunting for bugs

- patch/patch_inplace: list the JSON pointer errors parse_error.106-109
  and out_of_range.402/404, and quote the actual parse_error.105 message.
- unflatten: list parse_error.106/107/108 and out_of_range.404.
- to_bson: list out_of_range.415 (binary subtype above 255) and note
  that 412 and 415 are new in 3.13.0.
- to_string: state that string_t must be convertible to std::string, also
  in the StringType requirements table.
- JSON Lines: a `while (input >> j)` loop also throws after the last value
  for concatenated JSON values; show a loop that works for both.
- BON8: a string gets 0xFF only if nothing follows it in the message; a
  string at the end of an array or object is ended by 0xFE.
- custom_string_type.hpp: add operator+=(char), which the "Always
  required" list asks for (json_pointer::to_string, flatten, unflatten,
  and diff did not compile), and an ADL int_to_string for diff and items.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Cache the release headers with functools.lru_cache

Codacy (Pylint) flagged the mutable default argument that header() used
as its cache. functools.lru_cache keeps the same memoization without it.
The script's output is unchanged.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

---------

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>
This commit is contained in:
Niels Lohmann authored and GitHub committed 2026-10-02 11:32:15 +02:00
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@@ -44,9 +44,9 @@ for objects.
json j = json::array({true}); // [true]
```
**Opt-in copy semantics (since version 3.12.0)**
**Opt-in copy semantics (since version 3.13.0)**
If you define `JSON_BRACE_INIT_COPY_SEMANTICS` to `1` before including the library, single-element brace initialization is treated as copy/move instead of creating a single-element array:
If you define [`JSON_BRACE_INIT_COPY_SEMANTICS`](../api/macros/json_brace_init_copy_semantics.md) to `1` before including the library, single-element brace initialization is treated as copy/move instead of creating a single-element array:
```cpp
#define JSON_BRACE_INIT_COPY_SEMANTICS 1
@@ -85,7 +85,7 @@ The library supports **Unicode input** as follows:
- The library will not replace [Unicode noncharacters](http://www.unicode.org/faq/private_use.html#nonchar1).
- Invalid surrogates (e.g., incomplete pairs such as `\uDEAD`) will yield parse errors.
- The strings stored in the library are UTF-8 encoded. When using the default string type (`std::string`), note that its length/size functions return the number of stored bytes rather than the number of characters or glyphs.
- When you store strings with different encodings in the library, calling [`dump()`](https://nlohmann.github.io/json/classnlohmann_1_1basic__json_a50ec80b02d0f3f51130d4abb5d1cfdc5.html#a50ec80b02d0f3f51130d4abb5d1cfdc5) may throw an exception unless `json::error_handler_t::replace` or `json::error_handler_t::ignore` are used as error handlers.
- When you store strings with different encodings in the library, calling [`dump()`](../api/basic_json/dump.md) may throw an exception unless `json::error_handler_t::replace` or `json::error_handler_t::ignore` are used as error handlers.
In most cases, the parser is right to complain, because the input is not UTF-8 encoded. This is especially true for Microsoft Windows, where Latin-1 or ISO 8859-1 is often the standard encoding.
@@ -94,7 +94,7 @@ In most cases, the parser is right to complain, because the input is not UTF-8 e
!!! question "Questions"
- Why does `json::parse()` silently ignore part of my input?
- Why does [`json::parse()`](../api/basic_json/parse.md) silently ignore part of my input?
- Why does a `std::string`/buffer with extra data after the JSON text parse without error, while a similar-looking string with extra text does not?
A `'\0'` (NUL) byte anywhere in the input is treated the same as the real end of the input, rather than as an ordinary (and, outside of a string, invalid) byte. Everything from that byte onward is silently ignored, without a parse error — including further, otherwise well-formed JSON:
@@ -197,8 +197,8 @@ same object -- is a data race and requires external synchronization (e.g., a `st
Does this library support JSON Schema validation?
Not directly, but the companion project [json-schema-validator](https://github.com/pboettch/json-schema-validator)
builds JSON Schema (draft 4, 6, 7, and 2019-09) validation on top of this library and is a common recommendation
for this use case.
builds JSON Schema (draft 7; draft 4 in its older, now-superseded 1.x releases) validation on top of this library
and is a common recommendation for this use case.
## Exceptions
@@ -296,15 +296,13 @@ If you get ambiguous-overload errors when passing a JSON value to `fmt::format`/
Why does the code not compile with Android SDK?
Android defaults to using very old compilers and C++ libraries. To fix this, add the following to your `Application.mk`. This will switch to the LLVM C++ library, the Clang compiler, and enable C++11 and other features disabled by default.
Since [NDK r18](https://github.com/android/ndk/wiki/Changelog-r18) (2018), GCC and the `gnustl`/`stlport` C++
libraries have been removed from the Android NDK; Clang and `libc++` are now the only compiler and C++ library, and
they support C++11 and later out of the box. With a current NDK, no special configuration is needed to use this
library.
```ini
APP_STL := c++_shared
NDK_TOOLCHAIN_VERSION := clang3.6
APP_CPPFLAGS += -frtti -fexceptions
```
The code compiles successfully with [Android NDK](https://developer.android.com/ndk/index.html?hl=ml), Revision 9 - 11 (and possibly later) and [CrystaX's Android NDK](https://www.crystax.net/en/android/ndk) version 10.
Only very old NDKs (before r18), which defaulted to GCC and `gnustl`, lacked C++11 library features such as
`std::to_string`. If you run into this, update to a current NDK.
### Missing STL function
@@ -314,4 +312,6 @@ The code compiles successfully with [Android NDK](https://developer.android.com/
- Why do I get a compilation error `'to_string' is not a member of 'std'` (or similarly, for `strtod` or `strtof`)?
- Why does the code not compile with MinGW or Android SDK?
This is not an issue with the code, but rather with the compiler itself. On Android, see above to build with a newer environment. For MinGW, please refer to [this site](http://tehsausage.com/mingw-to-string) and [this discussion](https://github.com/nlohmann/json/issues/136) for information on how to fix this bug. For Android NDK using `APP_STL := gnustl_static`, please refer to [this discussion](https://github.com/nlohmann/json/issues/219).
This is not an issue with the code, but rather with the compiler itself. On Android, use a current NDK (see above).
For MinGW, please refer to [this site](http://tehsausage.com/mingw-to-string) and
[this discussion](https://github.com/nlohmann/json/issues/136) for information on how to fix this bug.