This package is very similar to the built-in go package called json, implementing encoding and decoding of JSON as defined in RFC 7159. The mapping between JSON and Go values is described in the documentation for the Marshal and Unmarshal functions.
Documentation: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/pschou/go-json
The differences in this implementation are some additional functions and interfaces.
In the Decoder type, one will find two additional functions:
- UseAutoConvert() - When enabled, this will attempt to convert any strings into defined element types, such as Integer, Boolean, or the CustomType interface
- UseSlice() - When enabled, this will automatically convert an object into a slice if a slice is specified in the type declaration. When vendors provide JSON output, and this output is broken in that it can vary when one or more elements are returned, this decoder will try overcome this by creating a slice when specified and if one object is provided it will be a slice of one with that object.
Note: the encoding has two types TextMarshaler and TextUnmarshaler which can be interfaced via a custom type to implement readers and writers for non-standard JSON literals
MarshalText() (text []byte, err error)
UnmarshalText(text []byte) error
An example of how this could be useful is encoding and decoding custom time formats into a custom time.Duration type. Take for example a JSON API provides a time as "1D3H2M0S". With the use of a custom ToString / FromString this can be encoded / decoded when the JSON is being read in or written out.