JSON

There are several ways to work with JSON right now, that we'll unify and polish very soon.

Unsafe Conversion

This emulates JavaScript's JSON conversion.

Parse

Simply use the (last resort) special identity external:

OCaml

type data = {name: string} [@@bs.deriving abstract]
external parseIntoMyData : string -> data = "parse" [@@bs.scope "JSON"][@@bs.val]

let result = parseIntoMyData "{\"name\": \"Luke\"}"
let n = result |. name

ReasonML

[@bs.deriving abstract]
type data = {name: string};

[@bs.scope "JSON"] [@bs.val]
external parseIntoMyData : string => data = "parse";

let result = parseIntoMyData("{\"name\": \"Luke\"}");
let n = nameGet(result);

Output:

var result = JSON.parse("{\"name\": \"Luke\"}");
var n = result.name;

Where data can be any type you assume the JSON is. As you can see, this compiles to a straightforward JSON.parse call. As with regular JS, this is convenient, but has no guarantee that e.g. the data is correctly shaped, or even syntactically valid.

Stringify

Since JSON.stringify is slightly safer than JSON.parse, we've provided it out of the box in Js.Json. It compiles to JSON.stringify.

Properly Use Js.Json

Technically, the correct way to handle JSON is to recursively parse each field, and handle invalid data accordingly. Js.Json provides such low-level building blocks. See the examples in the API docs.

Higher-level Helpers

We have a community-maintaned, pseudo-official JSON helper library called bs-json. Those interested in combinators can also check out JsonCodec. Both provide more convenient JSON parsing/printing helpers that leverage the previous section's low-level API.

We'll provide a better, first-party solution to JSON too in the future. Stay tuned!