manage the reference, i.e. increase and decrease the reference count
as needed. However, some functions **steal** the reference, i.e. they
have the same result as if the user called :cfunc:`json_decref()` on
-the argument right after calling the function. These are usually
-convenience functions for adding new references to containers and not
-to worry about the reference count.
+the argument right after calling the function. These functions are
+suffixed with ``_new`` or have ``_new_`` somewhere in their name.
+
+For example, the following code creates a new JSON array and appends
+an integer to it::
+
+ json_t *array, *integer;
+
+ array = json_array();
+ integer = json_integer(42);
+
+ json_array_append(array, integer);
+ json_decref(integer);
+
+Note how the caller has to release the reference to the integer value
+by calling :cfunc:`json_decref()`. By using a reference stealing
+function :cfunc:`json_array_append_new()` instead of
+:cfunc:`json_array_append()`, the code becomes much simpler::
+
+ json_t *array = json_array();
+ json_array_append_new(array, json_integer(42));
+
+In this case, the user doesn't have to explicitly release the
+reference to the integer value, as :cfunc:`json_array_append_new()`
+steals the reference when appending the value to the array.
In the following sections it is clearly documented whether a function
will return a new or borrowed reference or steal a reference to its
String
======
+Jansson uses UTF-8 as the character encoding. All JSON strings must be
+valid UTF-8 (or ASCII, as it's a subset of UTF-8). Normal null
+terminated C strings are used, so JSON strings may not contain
+embedded null characters. All other Unicode codepoints U+0001 through
+U+10FFFF are allowed.
+
.. cfunction:: json_t *json_string(const char *value)
.. refcounting:: new
Number
======
+The JSON specification only contains one numeric type, "number". The C
+programming language has distinct types for integer and floating-point
+numbers, so for practical reasons Jansson also has distinct types for
+the two. They are called "integer" and "real", respectively. For more
+information, see :ref:`rfc-conformance`.
+
.. cfunction:: json_t *json_integer(int value)
.. refcounting:: new
.. versionadded:: 1.2
+``JSON_PRESERVE_ORDER``
+ If this flag is used, object keys in the output are sorted into the
+ same order in which they were first inserted to the object. For
+ example, decoding a JSON text and then encoding with this flag
+ preserves the order of object keys.
+
+ .. versionadded:: 1.3
+
The following functions perform the actual JSON encoding. The result
is in UTF-8.
text to the Jansson representation of JSON data. The JSON
specification requires that a JSON text is either a serialized array
or object, and this requirement is also enforced with the following
-functions.
+functions. In other words, the top level value in the JSON text being
+decoded must be either array or object.
-The only supported character encoding is UTF-8 (which ASCII is a
-subset of).
+See :ref:`rfc-conformance` for a discussion on Jansson's conformance
+to the JSON specification. It explains many design decisions that
+affect especially the behavior of the decoder.
.. ctype:: json_error_t
values are equal. An integer value is never equal to a real value,
though.
-* Two strings are equal if their contained UTF-8 strings are equal.
+* Two strings are equal if their contained UTF-8 strings are equal,
+ byte by byte. Unicode comparison algorithms are not implemented.
* Two arrays are equal if they have the same number of elements and
each element in the first array is equal to the corresponding