Rearrange README.md a bit and make it work better in the doxygen generated docs.

Also, add a table of contents, and a brief section on using json-c with links to
the header files most likely to be useful.
This commit is contained in:
Eric Haszlakiewicz
2017-12-05 18:01:43 -05:00
parent ae242720b6
commit c01635e03e

119
README.md
View File

@@ -1,19 +1,27 @@
`json-c` {#mainpage}
========
JSON-C - A JSON implementation in C
1. [Overview and Build Status](#overview)
2. [Building on Unix](#buildunix)
3. [Install Prerequisites](#installprereq)
4. [Building with partial threading support](#buildthreaded)
5. [Linking to libjson-c](#linking)
6. [Using json-c](#using)
JSON-C - A JSON implementation in C <a name="overview"></a>
-----------------------------------
Build Status
* [![AppVeyor Build Status](https://ci.appveyor.com/api/projects/status/github/json-c/json-c?branch=master&svg=true)](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/hawicz/json-c)
* [![Travis Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/json-c/json-c.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/json-c/json-c)
* [AppVeyor Build](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/hawicz/json-c) ![AppVeyor Build Status](https://ci.appveyor.com/api/projects/status/github/json-c/json-c?branch=master&svg=true)
* [Travis Build](https://travis-ci.org/json-c/json-c) ![Travis Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/json-c/json-c.svg?branch=master)
JSON-C implements a reference counting object model that allows you to easily
construct JSON objects in C, output them as JSON formatted strings and parse
JSON formatted strings back into the C representation of JSON objects.
It aims to conform to [RFC 7159](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159).
Building on Unix with `git`, `gcc` and `autotools`
Building on Unix with `git`, `gcc` and `autotools` <a name="buildunix"></a>
--------------------------------------------------
Home page for json-c: https://github.com/json-c/json-c/wiki
@@ -28,10 +36,13 @@ See also the "Installing prerequisites" section below.
If you're not using a release tarball, you'll also need:
- `autoconf>=2.64` (`autoreconf`)
- `automake>=1.10.3`
- `automake>=1.13`
Make sure you have a complete `libtool` install, including `libtoolize`.
To generate docs (e.g. as part of make distcheck) you'll also need:
- `doxygen>=1.8.13`
### Build instructions:
`json-c` GitHub repo: https://github.com/json-c/json-c
@@ -54,48 +65,10 @@ To build and run the test programs:
```sh
$ make check
$ make USE_VALGRIND=0 check # optionally skip using valgrind
```
Building with partial threading support
----------------------------------------
Although json-c does not support fully multi-threaded access to
object trees, it has some code to help make use in threaded programs
a bit safer. Currently, this is limited to using atomic operations for
json_object_get() and json_object_put().
Since this may have a performance impact, of at least 3x slower
according to https://stackoverflow.com/a/11609063, it is disabled by
default. You may turn it on by adjusting your configure command with:
--enable-threading
Separately, the default hash function used for object field keys,
lh_char_hash, uses a compare-and-swap operation to ensure the randomly
seed is only generated once. Because this is a one-time operation, it
is always compiled in when the compare-and-swap operation is available.
Linking to `libjson-c`
----------------------
If your system has `pkgconfig`,
then you can just add this to your `makefile`:
```make
CFLAGS += $(shell pkg-config --cflags json-c)
LDFLAGS += $(shell pkg-config --libs json-c)
```
Without `pkgconfig`, you would do something like this:
```make
JSON_C_DIR=/path/to/json_c/install
CFLAGS += -I$(JSON_C_DIR)/include/json-c
LDFLAGS+= -L$(JSON_C_DIR)/lib -ljson-c
```
Install prerequisites
Install prerequisites <a name="installprereq"></a>
-----------------------
If you are on a relatively modern system, you'll likely be able to install
@@ -142,3 +115,59 @@ export PATH=${HOME}/ac_install/bin:$PATH
make install)
```
Building with partial threading support <a name="buildthreaded"></a>
----------------------------------------
Although json-c does not support fully multi-threaded access to
object trees, it has some code to help make use in threaded programs
a bit safer. Currently, this is limited to using atomic operations for
json_object_get() and json_object_put().
Since this may have a performance impact, of at least 3x slower
according to https://stackoverflow.com/a/11609063, it is disabled by
default. You may turn it on by adjusting your configure command with:
--enable-threading
Separately, the default hash function used for object field keys,
lh_char_hash, uses a compare-and-swap operation to ensure the randomly
seed is only generated once. Because this is a one-time operation, it
is always compiled in when the compare-and-swap operation is available.
Linking to `libjson-c` <a name="linking">
----------------------
If your system has `pkgconfig`,
then you can just add this to your `makefile`:
```make
CFLAGS += $(shell pkg-config --cflags json-c)
LDFLAGS += $(shell pkg-config --libs json-c)
```
Without `pkgconfig`, you would do something like this:
```make
JSON_C_DIR=/path/to/json_c/install
CFLAGS += -I$(JSON_C_DIR)/include/json-c
LDFLAGS+= -L$(JSON_C_DIR)/lib -ljson-c
```
Using json-c <a name="using">
------------
To use json-c you can either include json.h, or preferrably, one of the
following more specific header files:
* json_object.h - Core types and methods.
* json_tokener.h - Methods for parsing and serializing json-c object trees.
* json_pointer.h - JSON Pointer (RFC 6901) implementation for retrieving
objects from a json-c object tree.
* json_object_iterator.h - Methods for iterating over single json_object instances.
* json_visit.h - Methods for walking a tree of json-c objects.
* json_util.h - Miscelleanous utility functions.
For a full list of headers see [files.html](files.html)