Support zero-member types in NLOHMANN_DEFINE_TYPE_* macros (#4041)

NLOHMANN_DEFINE_TYPE_INTRUSIVE(Type) and its 11 sibling macros produced
broken code for types with no members to serialize. Invoking a variadic
macro so __VA_ARGS__ is empty is only standard-conforming since C++20,
so a plain __VA_OPT__ fix (as tried in #5142) breaks every pre-C++20
build under -pedantic. Instead, make all 12 macros purely variadic and
dispatch on argument count using a sentinel-padded extension of the
existing NLOHMANN_JSON_GET_MACRO idiom, giving full C++11-C++26 support
with no feature-test gate.

Verified against real GCC 16 and Clang at -std=c++11/14/17/20 with
-pedantic -Werror -Wvariadic-macros: zero regressions in the existing
unit-udt_macro.cpp suite plus 12 new zero-member test cases.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>
This commit is contained in:
Niels Lohmann
2026-07-11 19:55:56 +02:00
parent ca76c37650
commit d969eef216
4 changed files with 473 additions and 24 deletions
@@ -215,6 +215,24 @@ For _derived_ classes and structs, use the following macros
nlohmann::ordered_json j = p; // keys appear in declaration order: name, address, age
```
!!! note "Zero-member types"
All 12 `NLOHMANN_DEFINE_TYPE_*`/`NLOHMANN_DEFINE_DERIVED_TYPE_*` macros (excluding the `WITH_NAMES` variants)
also accept types with no member variables to serialize, producing/accepting an empty JSON object `{}`
(or, for the derived-type macros, just the base class's own JSON representation):
```cpp
namespace ns {
struct marker {
bool operator==(const marker&) const { return true; }
NLOHMANN_DEFINE_TYPE_INTRUSIVE(marker)
};
}
ns::marker m{};
nlohmann::json j = m; // {}
```
!!! note "No macro for non-default-constructible types"
There is currently no `NLOHMANN_DEFINE_TYPE_*`-style macro for types that are not