Preserve the order in JSON

[user786]

I have written a perl script to edit the a json file.

I need to check if cp is 10000 and set custcap to 99999 if so. If the cp is not equal to 10000, just exit out of the file without making changes.

The script works as expected. It makes the necessary changes and saves the files.

however after the changes,the order of the parameters in JSON file changes>

I read the json spec, My understanding is json is unordered.

can some one help me out with preserving the order

config file

 

{
    "version": "15320029",
    "global": {
        "ap": {
            "log": "info",
            "hyd": {
                "log": "info",
                "qo": false
            }
        },
        "cus": [
            {
                **"cp": "10000"**,
                "ser": "XYZ",
                "usesr": false,
                "services": {
                    "acc": {
                        "ips": {
                            "usesr": false
                        }
                    }
                },
                "q": {
                    "policy": "CAP",
                    **"custcap": 3000000**
                }
            },
            {
            "cp": "10441",
                "ser": "abc",
                "usesr": false,
                "services": {
                    "acc": {
                        "ips": {
                            "usesr": false
                        }
                    }
                },
                "q": {
                    "policy": "CAP",
                    "custcap": 3000000
                }
            }
         ]  
      }

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use JSON;

my $json;
{
   open my $fh, "<", "cfg.txt"
      or die("Can't open file \"/Users/hsivaram/cfg.txt\": $!\n");
   local $/;
   $json = <$fh>;
}

my $data = decode_json($json);

for my $cus (@{ $data->{global}{cus} }) {
   $cus->{q}{custcap} = 99999
      if $cus->{cp} == 10000;

}

$json = JSON->new->utf8->pretty->encode($data);

{
   open my $fh, ">" ,"cfg.txt"
      or die("Can't open file \"/Users/hsivaram/cfg.txt\": $!\n");
   local $/;

   print $fh $json;


}

After script execution the order of the file changes. is there a way to preserve the order ?

[roboticus]

user786:

Inside a dictionary/hash, there's no meaning to the order of the keys. That's what it means to be unordered. If you want to maintain order, I'd suggest switching to an array. Arrays will maintain the order.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

[Laurent_R]

Key and value pairs are always unordered in a hash. But you can also apply a sort to your data elements if you need to visit/modify them in a certain specific order. You're not saying really enough, tell us why you want a specific order.

[afoken]

is there a way to preserve the order

Not exactly, but JSON can sort JSON object keys. You need to call $json->canonical() before $json->encode($data). Note that this adds some significant overhead.

The big question remains: Why do you need sorted keys in the object?

Alexander

[tye]

Note that this adds some significant overhead.

Have you measured it? I have. It is far from "significant" unless you have at least one hash that holds a very large number of keys. I find such to be pretty rare in the JSON I've had to deal with.

I have found much more overhead resulted from the pain of having to deal with random order of keys in JSON, making comparisons or just visual searching much more difficult. And overhead to human processing costs a ton more than overhead to computer processing, IME.

[GotToBTru]

I'm curious why you need the order preserved? Perhaps you need to add a field to store a sorting key?

[u65]

why retain order?

If I were modifying a configuration file programmatically, I would want to preserve the original order to ease later visual inspection--very confusing to me to see a config file changed unnecessarily.

[Anonymous Monk]

& the unnecessary changes create headaches with version control when written to config or other files.

[Anonymous Monk]

Interesting that so many people have asked why you would need to preserve the order of keys when in fact it would be a very useful feature. Right now I would need it to modify the configuration of some charts, they are displayed in PHP in the order they are found in the JSON which is in turn stored in a postgres text field. I would've wanted to create a plperl function to modify the chart config but it looks like I'm better off reading the config, modifying it in PHP then saving it back to the db.

[choroba]

If you need to preserve the order, don't use "JSON object" (aka hash in Perl) as the data structure, use an array (or include an ordering attribute to the object).

[Anonymous Monk]

I have a reason why. I have a vim command that I use that Tidies different files. :Tidy When it's perl code, it uses the Perl::Tidy. If it's JSON, then it formats it nicely using JSON::PP. Recently I've been doing comparisons of serialized JSON data (to make sure it's formatted correctly) and it would be nice if the order was maintained when being Tidied. Performance isn't critical, it's an editor command; not used in production.

[Anonymous Monk]

I've been using a one-liner. json_pp -f json -t json -json_opt pretty. I may end up implementing it using Hash::Ordered

[Anonymous Monk]

Use the ordering/sorting feature then nobody is stopping you