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
@@ -47,3 +47,6 @@ JSON Lines input with more than one value is treated as invalid JSON by the [`pa
```
with a JSON Lines input does not work, because the parser will try to parse one value after the last one.
This is different from parsing a stream of *concatenated* (non-newline-delimited) JSON values, for which
`operator>>` does work -- see its [notes](../../api/operator_gtgt.md#notes) for details.
@@ -58,6 +58,14 @@ table describes the values of the parameters `depth`, `event`, and `parsed`.
| `array_end` | 1 | `#!json [52.519444,13.406667]` |
| `object_end` | 0 | `#!json {"location":[52.519444,13.406667],"name":"Berlin"}` |
!!! note "No built-in nesting depth limit"
The library has no built-in limit on recursion/nesting depth while parsing. A parser callback can only
*discard* content it has already parsed (by returning `#!c false`); it cannot make parsing fail once a
nesting limit is exceeded partway through reading a deeply nested value. If you need to reject over-deep
untrusted input outright, track `depth` in a callback and `throw` from it once your limit is exceeded (a
thrown exception propagates out of `parse()` as usual).
## Return value
Discarding a value (i.e., returning `#!c false`) has different effects depending on the context in which the function
@@ -112,3 +120,51 @@ This approach has two limitations:
For strict validation with precise error positions, implementing a [SAX interface](sax_interface.md) instead gives
access to the parser's position information directly.
## Recipe: streaming a large homogeneous array
A common use case is a huge top-level array of many similarly-shaped objects, too large to hold entirely in
memory as a `#!c json` value. A parser callback can hand off each completed element to a user function and then
discard it, so memory usage stays bounded by a single element (plus the not-yet-parsed tail of the input) rather
than the whole document. Since the top-level array's `array_start`/`array_end` are reported at `depth == 0` (its
parent is the document root), the object elements it contains are reported at `depth == 1`:
??? example
```cpp
std::ifstream input("large_array.json");
auto callback = [](int depth, json::parse_event_t event, json& parsed) -> bool {
if (depth == 1 && event == json::parse_event_t::object_end) {
handle_element(parsed); // process the element, e.g. write it elsewhere
return false; // discard it -- frees its memory before the next one is parsed
}
return true; // keep everything else, including the (by then empty) top-level array
};
json::parse(input, callback);
```
If the array's elements are scalars or nested arrays instead of objects, check for `parse_event_t::value` or
`parse_event_t::array_end` at `depth == 1` instead. The same approach works for a top-level *object* of many
homogeneous values by checking `object_end`/`value` events at `depth == 1` there too.
## Recipe: max nesting depth via a callback
Since there is no built-in nesting-depth limit (see the note above), a callback can enforce one manually by
tracking the maximum `depth` seen and throwing once it is exceeded:
??? example
```cpp
constexpr int max_depth = 32;
auto callback = [](int depth, json::parse_event_t /*event*/, json& /*parsed*/) -> bool {
if (depth > max_depth) {
throw std::runtime_error("maximum nesting depth exceeded");
}
return true;
};
json::parse(input, callback);
```