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Niels Lohmann a47170346a docs: new design for the documentation site (#5934)
* docs: new design for the documentation site

Apply the brand to the Material for MkDocs site: Inter and JetBrains Mono
served by the site (upright and real italic), brand colours, blue header band
with the syntax pattern, wordmark in the header, new home page (hero, cards,
animated feature tour), 404 page, polish for tabs, search, footer, focus
rings, tables and code blocks, and theme features (code copy, previous/next
footer, TOC follow, search suggestions).

Draw the number railroad diagram, the parser callback events and the iterator
illustrations as inline SVGs that follow the light and dark scheme. The
generator scripts are in docs/mkdocs/scripts/figures; the feature slideshow
(json-light.svg, json-dark.svg, replacing json.gif on the home page) is built
by docs/mkdocs/scripts/slideshow. Decision nodes in five flowcharts become
hexagons, which need far less room.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* docs: add figures, table captions and a macro chooser

- Figures with numbered captions: SAX stepper, json_view layout and edit
  stepper, exception map, JSON pointer and patch walkers, QA pipeline,
  scaling and binary size charts, roadmap lanes, release timeline,
  integration decision tree and namespace builder
- Table captions (nj-table-caption) on 9 pages
- Compile times: modules and PCH charts, filesystem section, re-measured
  Figure 1, links between features/modules.md and compile_times.md
- Interactive macro chooser for features/arbitrary_types.md
- Link check: exclude URLs that answer the plugin with 400/401/419 or are
  dead (customers.md)

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* docs: macro chooser generates adl_serializer for non-default-constructible types

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* docs: cross-link concept pages and API pages in See also sections

Add See also links in both directions between the concept pages (features,
home, integration) and the API pages, write API links in code font, give every
entry a comment after a dash, and show the callback event figure on the parser
callbacks page.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* docs: address review comments on the new design

- Home: add a "Latest release" button
- Sponsors: update the list and group it by tier
- Features: list all feature pages on the index page
- Releases: add highlights per release, link the 4.0 roadmap, add the first commit to the timeline
- Exceptions: prefix all example messages with the exception name
- API: no code font for format names in the See also links of the to_/from_ pages
- Merge Patch: show the document before, the patch, and the result
- Replace "--" with typographic dashes, mark external links with an icon, center Mermaid diagrams

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

---------

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>
2026-10-27 07:41:42 +01:00

3.4 KiB

nlohmann::basic_json::value_t

enum class value_t : std::uint8_t {
    null,
    object,
    array,
    string,
    boolean,
    number_integer,
    number_unsigned,
    number_float,
    binary,
    discarded
};

This enumeration collects the different JSON types. It is internally used to distinguish the stored values, and the functions is_null, is_object, is_array, is_string, is_boolean, is_number (with is_number_integer, is_number_unsigned, and is_number_float), is_discarded, is_binary, is_primitive, and is_structured rely on it.

Notes

!!! note "Ordering"

The order of types is as follows:

1. `null`
2. `boolean`
3. `number_integer`, `number_unsigned`, `number_float`
4. `object`
5. `array`
6. `string`
7. `binary`

`discarded` is unordered.

```mermaid
flowchart LR
    A[null] --> B[boolean]
    B --> C["number_integer / number_unsigned / number_float"]
    C --> D[object]
    D --> E[array]
    E --> F[string]
    F --> G[binary]
```

<p class="nj-caption" markdown>Arrows point from a type to the next greater type in the ordering used by
`operator<`.</p>

!!! note "Types of numbers"

There are three enumerators for numbers (`number_integer`, `number_unsigned`, and `number_float`) to distinguish
between different types of numbers:

  - [`number_unsigned_t`](number_unsigned_t.md) for unsigned integers
  - [`number_integer_t`](number_integer_t.md) for signed integers
  - [`number_float_t`](number_float_t.md) for floating-point numbers or to approximate integers which do not fit
    into the limits of their respective type

!!! warning "Comparison operators"

`operator<` and `operator<=>` (since C++20) are overloaded and compare according to the ordering described above.
Until C++20 all other relational and equality operators yield results according to the integer value of each
enumerator. Since C++20 some compilers consider the _rewritten candidates_ generated from `operator<=>` during
overload resolution, while others do not. For predictable and portable behavior use:

  - `operator<` or `operator<=>` when wanting to compare according to the order described above
  - `operator==` or `operator!=` when wanting to compare according to each enumerators integer value

Examples

??? example

The following code how `type()` queries the `value_t` for all JSON types.

```cpp
--8<-- "examples/type.cpp"
```

Output:

```json
--8<-- "examples/type.output"
```

See also

Version history

  • Added in version 1.0.0.
  • Added unsigned integer type in version 2.0.0.
  • Added binary type in version 3.8.0.