PHP JSON Parser - Read large JSON from any source in a memory-efficient way

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PHP JSON Parser - Read large JSON from any source in a memory-efficient way image

JSON Parser is a zero-dependencies pull parser to read large JSON from any source in a memory-efficient way. You can read JSON from any source, such as a string, URL, etc., and iterate through it like so:

// a source is anything that can provide a JSON, in this case an endpoint
$source = 'https://randomuser.me/api/1.4?seed=json-parser&results=5';
 
foreach (new JsonParser($source) as $key => $value) {
// instead of loading the whole JSON, we keep in memory only one key and value at a time
}

If you don't want to use foreach this parser also comes with a traverse method that looks like the following:

JsonParser::parse($source)->traverse(function (mixed $value, string|int $key, JsonParser $parser) {
// lazily load one key and value at a time; we can also access the parser if needed
});

The above examples demonstrate using a URL to process JSON, but the package supports several data sources. At the time of writing, the readme lists the following sources:

  • strings, e.g. {"foo":"bar"}
  • iterables, i.e. arrays or instances of Traversable
  • file paths, e.g. /path/to/large.json
  • resources, e.g. streams
  • API endpoint URLs, e.g. https://endpoint.json or any instance of Psr\Http\Message\UriInterface
  • PSR-7 requests, i.e. any instance of Psr\Http\Message\RequestInterface
  • PSR-7 messages, i.e. any instance of Psr\Http\Message\MessageInterface
  • PSR-7 streams, i.e. any instance of Psr\Http\Message\StreamInterface
  • Laravel HTTP client requests, i.e. any instance of Illuminate\Http\Client\Request
  • Laravel HTTP client responses, i.e. any instance of Illuminate\Http\Client\Response
  • user-defined sources, i.e. any instance of Cerbero\JsonParser\Sources\Source

Another amazing feature of this library that I want to point out is pointers which are useful to extract only specific subtrees from a large JSON dataset:

// Select the first gender result
$json = JsonParser::parse($source)->pointer('/results/0/gender');
 
foreach ($json as $key => $value) {
// 1st and only iteration: $key === 'gender', $value === 'female'
}
 
// Get all gender results
$json = JsonParser::parse($source)->pointer('/results/-/gender');
// ...

This package has many other features I still need to mention that you should check out! For example, it has a progress API to track the parsing progress (i.e., completion percentage, bytes processed, etc). Check out this package, get full installation instructions, and view the source code on GitHub!

Paul Redmond photo

Staff writer at Laravel News. Full stack web developer and author.

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