A JSON value represented as a Haskell value.

An encoding of a JSON value.

Acquire the underlying bytestring builder.

A series of values that, when encoded, should be separated by commas.

A JSON "array" (sequence).

The empty array.

A key/value pair for an Object.

A JSON "object" (key/value map).

The empty object.

A newtype wrapper for UTCTime that uses the same non-standard serialization format as Microsoft .NET, whose System.DateTime type is by default serialized to JSON as in the following example:

/Date(1302547608878)/

The number represents milliseconds since the Unix epoch.

Fail parsing due to a type mismatch, with a descriptive message.

Example usage:

instance FromJSON Coord where
  parseJSON (Object v) = {- type matches, life is good -}
  parseJSON wat        = typeMismatch "Coord" wat

A JSON parser.

The result of running a Parser.

A type that can be converted from JSON, with the possibility of failure.

In many cases, you can get the compiler to generate parsing code for you (see below). To begin, let's cover writing an instance by hand.

There are various reasons a conversion could fail. For example, an Object could be missing a required key, an Array could be of the wrong size, or a value could be of an incompatible type.

The basic ways to signal a failed conversion are as follows:

• empty and mzero work, but are terse and uninformative
• fail yields a custom error message
• typeMismatch produces an informative message for cases when the value encountered is not of the expected type

An example type and instance:

-- Allow ourselves to write Text literals.
{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}

data Coord = Coord { x :: Double, y :: Double }

instance FromJSON Coord where
  parseJSON (Object v) = Coord    <$>
                         v .: "x" <*>
                         v .: "y"

  -- We do not expect a non-Object value here.
  -- We could use mzero to fail, but typeMismatch
  -- gives a much more informative error message.
  parseJSON invalid    = typeMismatch "Coord" invalid

Instead of manually writing your FromJSON instance, there are two options to do it automatically:

• Data.Aeson.TH provides Template Haskell functions which will derive an instance at compile time. The generated instance is optimized for your type so will probably be more efficient than the following two options:
• The compiler can provide a default generic implementation for parseJSON.

To use the second, simply add a deriving Generic clause to your datatype and declare a FromJSON instance for your datatype without giving a definition for parseJSON.

For example, the previous example can be simplified to just:

{-# LANGUAGE DeriveGeneric #-}

import GHC.Generics

data Coord = Coord { x :: Double, y :: Double } deriving Generic

instance FromJSON Coord

If DefaultSignatures doesn't give exactly the results you want, you can customize the generic decoding with only a tiny amount of effort, using genericParseJSON with your preferred Options:

instance FromJSON Coord where
    parseJSON = genericParseJSON defaultOptions

Convert a value from JSON, failing if the types do not match.

Run a Parser.

Run a Parser with an Either result type. If the parse fails, the Left payload will contain an error message.

Run a Parser with a Maybe result type.

A type that can be converted to JSON.

An example type and instance:

-- Allow ourselves to write Text literals.
{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}

data Coord = Coord { x :: Double, y :: Double }

instance ToJSON Coord where
  toJSON (Coord x y) = object ["x" .= x, "y" .= y]

  toEncoding (Coord x y) = pairs ("x" .= x <> "y" .= y)

Instead of manually writing your ToJSON instance, there are two options to do it automatically:

• Data.Aeson.TH provides Template Haskell functions which will derive an instance at compile time. The generated instance is optimized for your type so will probably be more efficient than the following two options:
• The compiler can provide a default generic implementation for toJSON.

To use the second, simply add a deriving Generic clause to your datatype and declare a ToJSON instance for your datatype without giving definitions for toJSON or toEncoding.

For example, the previous example can be simplified to a more minimal instance:

{-# LANGUAGE DeriveGeneric #-}

import GHC.Generics

data Coord = Coord { x :: Double, y :: Double } deriving Generic

instance ToJSON Coord where
    toEncoding = genericToEncoding defaultOptions

Why do we provide an implementation for toEncoding here? The toEncoding function is a relatively new addition to this class. To allow users of older versions of this library to upgrade without having to edit all of their instances or encounter surprising incompatibilities, the default implementation of toEncoding uses toJSON. This produces correct results, but since it performs an intermediate conversion to a Value, it will be less efficient than directly emitting an Encoding. Our one-liner definition of toEncoding above bypasses the intermediate Value.

If DefaultSignatures doesn't give exactly the results you want, you can customize the generic encoding with only a tiny amount of effort, using genericToJSON and genericToEncoding with your preferred Options:

instance ToJSON Coord where
    toJSON     = genericToJSON defaultOptions
    toEncoding = genericToEncoding defaultOptions

A key-value pair for encoding a JSON object.

If the inner Parser failed, modify the failure message using the provided function. This allows you to create more descriptive error messages. For example:

parseJSON (Object o) = modifyFailure
    ("Parsing of the Foo value failed: " ++)
    (Foo <$> o .: "someField")

Since 0.6.2.0

Class of generic representation types (Rep) that can be converted from JSON.

Class of generic representation types (Rep) that can be converted to JSON.

Class of generic representation types (Rep) that can be converted to a JSON Encoding.

A configurable generic JSON creator. This function applied to defaultOptions is used as the default for toJSON when the type is an instance of Generic.

A configurable generic JSON encoder. This function applied to defaultOptions is used as the default for toEncoding when the type is an instance of Generic.

A configurable generic JSON decoder. This function applied to defaultOptions is used as the default for parseJSON when the type is an instance of Generic.

withObject expected f value applies f to the Object when value is an Object and fails using typeMismatch expected otherwise.

withText expected f value applies f to the Text when value is a String and fails using typeMismatch expected otherwise.

withArray expected f value applies f to the Array when value is an Array and fails using typeMismatch expected otherwise.

withNumber expected f value applies f to the Number when value is a Number. and fails using typeMismatch expected otherwise.

withScientific expected f value applies f to the Scientific number when value is a Number. and fails using typeMismatch expected otherwise.

withBool expected f value applies f to the Bool when value is a Bool and fails using typeMismatch expected otherwise.

Encode a series of key/value pairs, separated by commas.

Encode a Foldable as a JSON array.

Retrieve the value associated with the given key of an Object. The result is empty if the key is not present or the value cannot be converted to the desired type.

This accessor is appropriate if the key and value must be present in an object for it to be valid. If the key and value are optional, use .:? instead.

Retrieve the value associated with the given key of an Object. The result is Nothing if the key is not present, or empty if the value cannot be converted to the desired type.

This accessor is most useful if the key and value can be absent from an object without affecting its validity. If the key and value are mandatory, use .: instead.

Like .:?, but the resulting parser will fail, if the key is present but is Null.

Helper for use in combination with .:? to provide default values for optional JSON object fields.

This combinator is most useful if the key and value can be absent from an object without affecting its validity and we know a default value to assign in that case. If the key and value are mandatory, use .: instead.

Example usage:

 v1 <- o .:? "opt_field_with_dfl" .!= "default_val"
 v2 <- o .:  "mandatory_field"
 v3 <- o .:? "opt_field2"

Create a Value from a list of name/value Pairs. If duplicate keys arise, earlier keys and their associated values win.

Options that specify how to encode/decode your datatype to/from JSON.

Specifies how to encode constructors of a sum datatype.

Converts from CamelCase to another lower case, interspersing the character between all capital letters and their previous entries, except those capital letters that appear together, like API.

For use by Aeson template haskell calls.

camelTo '_' 'CamelCaseAPI' == "camel_case_api"

Better version of camelTo. Example where it works better:

camelTo '_' 'CamelAPICase' == "camel_apicase"
camelTo2 '_' 'CamelAPICase' == "camel_api_case"

Default encoding Options:

Options
{ fieldLabelModifier      = id
, constructorTagModifier  = id
, allNullaryToStringTag   = True
, omitNothingFields       = False
, sumEncoding             = defaultTaggedObject
}

Default TaggedObject SumEncoding options:

defaultTaggedObject = TaggedObject
                      { tagFieldName      = "tag"
                      , contentsFieldName = "contents"
                      }