JSON-C Example

So you want to parse JSON with C? Welcome aboard!

First get json-c, configure, compile, and update your ld cache

wget http://oss.metaparadigm.com/json-c/json-c-0.9.tar.gz
tar xf json-c-0.9.tar.gz
cd json-c-0.9
./configure && make && sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

Now use one of the test files provided or this example:
http://www.jroller.com/RickHigh/entry/json_parsing_with_c_simple

cd ..
vim json-example.c
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stddef.h>
#include <string.h>

#include "json.h"

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
  struct json_object *new_obj;

  MC_SET_DEBUG(1);
  // I added some new lines... not in real program
  new_obj = json_tokener_parse("/* more difficult test case */ { \"glossary\": { \"title\": \"example glossary\", \"pageCount\": 100, \"GlossDiv\": { \"title\": \"S\", \"GlossList\": [ { \"ID\": \"SGML\", \"SortAs\": \"SGML\", \"GlossTerm\": \"Standard Generalized Markup Language\", \"Acronym\": \"SGML\", \"Abbrev\": \"ISO 8879:1986\", \"GlossDef\": \"A meta-markup language, used to create markup languages such as DocBook.\", \"GlossSeeAlso\": [\"GML\", \"XML\", \"markup\"] } ] } } }");
  printf("new_obj.to_string()=%s\n", json_object_to_json_string(new_obj));

  new_obj = json_object_object_get(new_obj, "glossary");
  printf("new_obj.to_string()=%s\n", json_object_to_json_string(new_obj));

  new_obj = json_object_object_get(new_obj, "pageCount");


  int pageCount = json_object_get_int(new_obj);

  printf("Page count = %d", pageCount);

  json_object_put(new_obj);

  return 0;
}

Put it in a Makefile with the right settings.

vim Makefile
all: static

static:
  gcc -static json-example.c -L/usr/local/lib -ljson -I/usr/local/include/json -o json-example-static
  ./json-example-static

shared:
  gcc json-example.c -L/usr/local/lib -ljson -I/usr/local/include/json -o json-example-shared
  ./json-example-shared

.PHONY: all static shared

Finally test that it works:

make static
make shared

Hopefully that's enough to get you started. The big thing is that when you compile your own projects, make sure that you include the json library and paths.