xemu/qobject
Markus Armbruster 62815d85ae json: Redesign the callback to consume JSON values
The classical way to structure parser and lexer is to have the client
call the parser to get an abstract syntax tree, the parser call the
lexer to get the next token, and the lexer call some function to get
input characters.

Another way to structure them would be to have the client feed
characters to the lexer, the lexer feed tokens to the parser, and the
parser feed abstract syntax trees to some callback provided by the
client.  This way is more easily integrated into an event loop that
dispatches input characters as they arrive.

Our JSON parser is kind of between the two.  The lexer feeds tokens to
a "streamer" instead of a real parser.  The streamer accumulates
tokens until it got the sequence of tokens that comprise a single JSON
value (it counts curly braces and square brackets to decide).  It
feeds those token sequences to a callback provided by the client.  The
callback passes each token sequence to the parser, and gets back an
abstract syntax tree.

I figure it was done that way to make a straightforward recursive
descent parser possible.  "Get next token" becomes "pop the first
token off the token sequence".  Drawback: we need to store a complete
token sequence.  Each token eats 13 + input characters + malloc
overhead bytes.

Observations:

1. This is not the only way to use recursive descent.  If we replaced
   "get next token" by a coroutine yield, we could do without a
   streamer.

2. The lexer reports errors by passing a JSON_ERROR token to the
   streamer.  This communicates the offending input characters and
   their location, but no more.

3. The streamer reports errors by passing a null token sequence to the
   callback.  The (already poor) lexical error information is thrown
   away.

4. Having the callback receive a token sequence duplicates the code to
   convert token sequence to abstract syntax tree in every callback.

5. Known bug: the streamer silently drops incomplete token sequences.

This commit rectifies 4. by lifting the call of the parser from the
callbacks into the streamer.  Later commits will address 3. and 5.

The lifting removes a bug from qjson.c's parse_json(): it passed a
pointer to a non-null Error * in certain cases, as demonstrated by
check-qjson.c.

json_parser_parse() is now unused.  It's a stupid wrapper around
json_parser_parse_err().  Drop it, and rename json_parser_parse_err()
to json_parser_parse().

Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
Message-Id: <20180823164025.12553-35-armbru@redhat.com>
2018-08-24 20:26:37 +02:00
..
block-qdict.c qdict: Make qdict_extract_subqdict() accept dst = NULL 2018-08-15 12:50:39 +02:00
json-lexer.c json: Have lexer call streamer directly 2018-08-24 20:26:37 +02:00
json-parser.c json: Redesign the callback to consume JSON values 2018-08-24 20:26:37 +02:00
json-streamer.c json: Redesign the callback to consume JSON values 2018-08-24 20:26:37 +02:00
Makefile.objs qobject: Move block-specific qdict code to block-qdict.c 2018-06-15 14:49:44 +02:00
qbool.c qapi: Remove qobject_to_X() functions 2018-03-19 14:58:36 -05:00
qdict.c qobject: Move block-specific qdict code to block-qdict.c 2018-06-15 14:49:44 +02:00
qjson.c json: Redesign the callback to consume JSON values 2018-08-24 20:26:37 +02:00
qlist.c qobject: Replace qobject_incref/QINCREF qobject_decref/QDECREF 2018-05-04 08:27:53 +02:00
qlit.c qapi: Replace qobject_to_X(o) by qobject_to(X, o) 2018-03-19 14:58:36 -05:00
qnull.c qapi: Add qobject_is_equal() 2017-11-17 18:21:30 +01:00
qnum.c qapi: Remove qobject_to_X() functions 2018-03-19 14:58:36 -05:00
qobject.c qobject: use a QObjectBase_ struct 2018-05-04 08:27:53 +02:00
qstring.c qstring: Move qstring_from_substr()'s @end one to the right 2018-07-28 09:09:58 +02:00