Fix documentation gaps found in a full GitHub Discussions review (#5264)

* 📝 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>

* 🎨 fix format

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

---------

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>
This commit is contained in:
Niels Lohmann
2026-07-10 16:01:08 +02:00
committed by GitHub
parent b630f5e9c7
commit e9c3985f0a
23 changed files with 367 additions and 3 deletions
@@ -4,7 +4,8 @@
In many situations, such as configuration files, missing values are not exceptional, but may be treated as if a default
value was present. For this case, use [`value(key, default_value)`](../../api/basic_json/value.md) which takes the key
you want to access and a default value in case there is no value stored with that key.
you want to access and a default value in case there is no value stored with that key. This is equivalent to Python's
`dict.get(key, default)`.
## Example
@@ -102,6 +102,20 @@ that the passed index is the new maximal index. Intermediate values are filled w
`operator[]` can only be used with objects (with a string argument) or with arrays (with a numeric argument). For
other types, a [`basic_json::type_error`](../../home/exceptions.md#jsonexceptiontype_error305) is thrown.
## Performance: reserving array capacity
There is no public `reserve(count)` member on `basic_json` for pre-allocating array capacity. If you are building
a large array incrementally (e.g., via repeated `push_back()`) and know its final size ahead of time, you can
reserve capacity via `get_ref()` to access the underlying `array_t` directly:
```cpp
json j = json::array();
j.get_ref<json::array_t&>().reserve(1000);
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; ++i) {
j.push_back(i);
}
```
## Summary
| scenario | non-const value | const value |