Syntax for documenting JSON structure

Roman A. Taycher picture Roman A. Taycher · Oct 17, 2010 · Viewed 56.3k times · Source

So I'm trying to document the format of the json returned by an api I am writing against and I'd like to know if there is any popular format for the documentation of json structure.

Note I'm not trying to to test or validate anything, I'm just using this for documentation. Also some ways to add comments to non-constants(items always returned w/ the same value) would be nice.

This the not totally thought out scheme I'm currently using:

Plain names refer to identifiers or types.
Some types have type-comment
Strings that appear to be constant(always returned for that type of request) strings are "str"
Constant Numbers would be just the number
Constant null is null
Booleans are true/false for constant booleans or Boolean otherwise
[a,b,c] are lists with 3 items a,b,c
[...  ...] is a list of repeating elements of some types/constants/patterns
{a:A,b:B,c:c} and {... ...}  is the same for a dictionary.

example:

story          := [header,footer]
header         := {"data":realHeader,"kind":"Listing"}
realHeader     := {"after": null, "before": null, "children": [{"data": realRealHeader, "kind": "t3"}], "modhash": ""}
footer         := {"data":AlmostComments,"kind":"Listing"}
AlmostComments := {"data": {"after": null, "before": null, "children": comments, "modhash": ""}, "kind": "t1"}
comments       := [...{"data":comment, "kind":"t1"}...]

realRealHeader :=
{"author": string,
"clicked": boolean,
"created": int,
"created_utc": int,
"domain": "code.reddit.com",
"downs": int,
"hidden": boolean,
"id": string-id,
"is_self": boolean,
"levenshtein": null,
"likes": null,
"media": null,
"media_embed": { },
"name": string-id,
"num_comments": int,
"over_18": false,
"permalink": string-urlLinkToStoryStartingFrom/r,
"saved": false,
"score": int,
"selftext": string,
"selftext_html": string-html,
"subreddit": string-subredditname,
"subreddit_id": string-id,
"thumbnail": "",
"title": string,
"ups": int,
"url": "http://code.reddit.com/"
}


comments := {
"author": string,
"body": string-body_html-wout-html,
"body_html": string-html-formated,
"created": int,
"created_utc": int,
"downs": int,
"id": string-id,
"levenshtein": null,
"likes": null,
"link_id": string-id,
"name": string-id",
"parent_id": string-id,
"replies": AlmostComments or null,
"subreddit": string-subredditname,
"subreddit_id": string-id,
"ups": int
}

Answer

StaxMan picture StaxMan · Jan 6, 2011

In theory JSON Schema could serve this purpose, but in practice I am not sure it does. Worth mentioning I hope.

Other than this, my personal opinion is that since JSON is predominantly used for transferring objects, documenting equivalent objects in language client uses (Java, C#, various scripting languages) may make most sense -- after all, such objects usually are mapped/bound to JSON and back. And then you can use whatever documentation tools are available, like Javadoc for Java (perldoc for Perl, Oxygen for c++ etc etc).

For specifying interfaces there is also WADL (Web App Description Language), which might help.