[swift-users] Decode a JSON object of unknown format into a Dictionary with Decodable in Swift 4

[Itai Ferber]

Hi Jon,

I just joined this mailing list and have tried to catch up on the 
history of this thread, so please excuse me if I’ve missed something.

I’m sorry the Codable API at the moment does not answer your needs — 
you’re clearly not the only one who’s run into this, so let’s see 
how we can work together to make the API better for everyone.
For one thing, in the case of grabbing a subtree of JSON as 
"unevaluated" or "unmapped" (as it appears to be in the metadata case), 
it should be fairly simple to add a `JSONDecoder.UnevaluatedJSON` type 
that will allow you to essentially decode that part of the tree as an 
`Any`. `JSONDecoder` would have knowledge of this type and would be able 
to return the subtree inside of it — you’d decode a property as 
`JSONDecoder.UnevaluatedJSON.self` and access the contents through `var 
value: Any?`, or something similar. This would be simple additive API, 
which although might not make it in the upcoming betas, should be fairly 
simple introduce. Would this solve that use case?

We’re also working on improving `NSISO8601DateFormatter`. I don’t 
think I saw it in any of your emails — what specific use case are you 
looking for that it doesn’t at the moment support?

— Itai

On 23 Jun 2017, at 9:24, Jon Shier via swift-users wrote:

> David:
> 	I never called the design silly (though I think it’s inadequate for 
> some important usage and makes some strange decisions), I was 
> referring to the fact that the (apparent) official solution can’t 
> actually decode all of the JSON people use. It’s the same reason I 
> brought up NSISO8601DateFormatter. After years of using third party 
> libraries or writing your own, limited, implementation, finally, 
> finally there was an official solution from Apple. The official 8601 
> date formatter. Only, come to find out, it doesn’t actually handle 
> all of 8601 and those third party libraries or custom implementations 
> are still required if you venture outside supported scenarios. I’m 
> concerned about the same thing happening here. Now, if JSONDecoder 
> isn’t actually intended to serve as a general JSON parsing solution, 
> which I think would be surprising to a lot people, then fair enough. 
> Apple and the Swift team just need to be far more clear that that’s 
> the case, rather letting everyone believe otherwise. And frankly, if 
> that’s the case, I think a huge opportunity has been missed. At the 
> same time, if / when an official solution for JSON parsing comes out, 
> or an actual JSON representation, how will it interact with the 
> previous implementation?
> 	These concerns, and the general concerns I expressed during the 
> evolution review (which still exist) aside, this is fixable, if the 
> Swift team is interested in doing so. However, if the limitations of 
> JSONDecoder aren’t even seen as limitations, or interest in fixing 
> them aren’t there, then there’s little point to continuing the 
> discussion. Something as simple as an additional decode(_ type: from: 
> Any) on JSONDecoder would solve the issues with decoding partially 
> deserialized blobs or representations from other APIs. Something to 
> help represent Any in Codable types might be useful, though I 
> recognize that there isn’t any way to currently differentiate 
> between Codable types and those just used by JSON.
> 	All of that said, my concerns mainly lie within the JSON realm. 
> Codable works great for serialization to disk or other scenarios where 
> I can just deal with the Data result and not have to worry about 
> weakly typed intermediate results. I’ll certainly be using it 
> everywhere I can. And I’m super happy that conformance is generated 
> by the compiler rather than manually, like we had to do with 
> Objective-C for over a decade. Even the JSON side is useful if I can 
> control both sides of the API, which makes Swift on the server very 
> powerful.
> 	So if I seem overly strident in my expression here it’s because I 
> experience the pain of consuming poorly designed JSON in Swift on 
> practically a daily basis and had hoped that a native implementation 
> would alleviate that. That it doesn’t, for me and others, currently, 
> is very disappointing. That the Swift team doesn’t seem to see the 
> current limitations as important or at all is doubly so, since it 
> seems like these issues will never be fixed.
>
>
>
> Jon
>
>
>> On Jun 23, 2017, at 4:34 AM, David Hart <david at hartbit.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 23 Jun 2017, at 03:45, Jon Shier via swift-users 
>> <swift-users at swift.org <mailto:swift-users at swift.org>> wrote:
>>
>>> 	I’m sorry, are you complaining about my use of Codable instead of 
>>> more precisely referring to the JSON endcode/decode functionality 
>>> based on it in Foundation, or are you honestly trying to say that 
>>> said functionality was never intended to be a general purpose JSON 
>>> solution? If it’s not actually intended to handle all JSON you 
>>> should probably call it something else.
>>
>> Hi Jon,
>>
>> First of all, I'd like to point out that I've found your tone to be 
>> quite rude. Calling the design of Codable, that has gotten a lot of 
>> work from Apple and swift-evolution, as silly is insulting and can 
>> leave people hurt. If you have found it lacking, please say so: we're 
>> all here to discuss any feedback people have had with Swift. But 
>> please do so with respect for the people and the work behind it.
>>
>> Now, concerning Codable, I find its name quite apt. It was never 
>> intended to be used a full JSON parser but as a strongly-typed Swift 
>> equivalent of Objective-C's NSCoding, which is nothing more than a 
>> framework for serializing and deserializing types into different file 
>> formats.
>>
>> David.
>>
>>> Jon
>>>
>>>> On Jun 22, 2017, at 9:42 PM, Greg Parker <gparker at apple.com 
>>>> <mailto:gparker at apple.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On Jun 22, 2017, at 6:00 PM, Jon Shier via swift-users 
>>>>> <swift-users at swift.org <mailto:swift-users at swift.org>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> 	My main concern here is that, as Swift’s official JSON parsing 
>>>>> method, Codable should be able to handle any JSON representation 
>>>>> and use and it doesn’t.
>>>>
>>>> Is this true? Is Codable intended to be Swift's official JSON 
>>>> parsing system? Is Codable intended to be a general-purpose JSON 
>>>> parsing system?
>>>>
>>>> My understanding was that Codable was designed to serialize Swift 
>>>> types, not to be able to import arbitrary JSON text into Swift nor 
>>>> to interoperate with every existing JSON API.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> Greg Parker     gparker at apple.com <mailto:gparker at apple.com>     
>>>> Runtime Wrangler
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
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>>> swift-users at swift.org <mailto:swift-users at swift.org>
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