json-uri

json-uri

json-uri is a simple uri-compatible json translator with notable advantages:

• Browser-compatible with no dependencies and size of less than 1kB
• 25% ~ 40% size deduction when uri-encoded, comparing to uri-encoded JSON string

json-uri searches for unused characters in provided string, and then replaces most commonly seen characters ({ } . : etc.) and sequences ("," ":" etc.) in JSON strings with them. This provides significant improvement on encoded string length with reasonable cost.

json-uri has some difference from similar packages like json-url and juri:

• It doesn't concern about readability. JSON strings are rarely readable without multi-line formatting, so as a single-line string, trying to keep encoded string readable is commonly useless.
• It doesn't apply compressing algorithm or other complex methods to further reduce encoded length, for following reasons:
  • most common usage of uri-compatible json translating is to pass JSON objects through web urls, and
  • url parameters longer than 2kB or 4kB are usually considered unsafe due to browser and server limitations, so
  • it is necessary to reduce a 1000-byte encoded string to 700 byte, but not from 700 byte to 680 byte with a lot more code.
• It doesn't accept custom dictionaries, because it introduces extra coupling into your code. Just use shorter parameter names if you need.

Usage

Encode:

var ju = require('json-uri');
var jsonStr = JSON.stringify(obj);
var encodedStr = ju.encode(jsonStr);
window.location.href = 'http://example.com/?' + encodeURIComponent(encodedStr);

Decode:

var param = window.location.search.slice(1);
var encodedStr = decodeURIComponent(param);
var decodedStr = ju.decode(encodedStr);
var obj = JSON.parse(decodedStr);

API

var ju = require('json-uri');

• ju.encode(str)

  Encode JSON string to json-uri string.

  • str string JSON string to be encoded

• ju.decode(str)

  Decode json-uri string to JSON string.

  • str string json-uri string to be decoded
  • throws SyntaxError when the given string is of wrong format

TODO

• Add more test cases.