Serialization

Serialization is the process of turning a JSON value back into JSON text. It is the counterpart to parsing. The central function is dump, which returns the JSON text as a string.

json j = {{"pi", 3.141}, {"happy", true}};

std::string s = j.dump();   // {"happy":true,"pi":3.141}

To write a value directly to a stream (for example, a file or #!cpp std::cout), the operator<< is provided:

std::cout << j << std::endl;

!!! note “String, not raw value”

`dump` always returns a **JSON text**. Serializing a JSON string therefore includes the surrounding quotes and
escapes special characters. To obtain the *contained* string value without quotes, use
[`get<std::string>()`](conversions.md) instead of `dump`. See the [converting values](conversions.md) page.

Pretty-printing

By default, dump produces the most compact representation without any superfluous whitespace. Passing a non-negative indent argument pretty-prints the output with the given number of spaces per level:

??? example

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

Output:

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

The indentation character can be changed with the second argument (e.g., a tab #!cpp '\t'). An indent of 0 inserts newlines but no leading spaces, and the default of #!cpp -1 selects the compact single-line form.

Non-ASCII characters

Strings are stored and serialized as UTF-8 (see types). By default, dump copies valid non-ASCII characters as-is. Setting the third argument ensure_ascii to #!cpp true escapes all non-ASCII characters with \uXXXX sequences, so that the output contains only ASCII characters:

json j = "苹果";
j.dump();               // "苹果"
j.dump(-1, ' ', true);  // "苹果"

Handling invalid UTF-8

If a string contains invalid UTF-8 sequences (for example, because it holds data in another encoding such as Latin-1), serialization fails by default. The fourth argument of dump selects an error_handler:

strict (default) — throw a type_error.316 exception.
replace — replace invalid bytes with the Unicode replacement character U+FFFD (�).
ignore — silently drop invalid bytes.

??? example

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

Output:

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

!!! tip “Avoiding invalid UTF-8”

The best fix is to ensure that all strings are UTF-8 encoded before storing them. See the
[FAQ on non-ASCII characters](../home/faq.md#parse-errors-reading-non-ascii-characters) for how to convert wide or
Latin-1 strings.

Numbers, NaN, and binary values

Numbers are serialized with enough precision to round-trip; see number serialization.
NaN and infinity cannot be represented in JSON and are serialized as #!json null; see NaN handling. The binary formats can preserve them.
Binary values have no JSON representation and are serialized as a helper object for debugging only; see binary values.

Using `std::format`, `std::print`, and `fmt`

Since version 3.12.0, JSON values can be formatted directly with C++20‘s std::format whenever the standard library provides the <format> header (controlled by JSON_HAS_STD_FORMAT). This is enabled by the std::formatter<basic_json> specialization, which also makes JSON values work with std::format_to and with C++23’s std::print/std::println:

std::print("{}", j);      // compact, like j.dump()
std::print("{:2}", j);    // pretty-printed with indent 2 (like j.dump(2))
std::println("{:#}", j);  // pretty-printed with the default indent

The format spec mirrors the dump parameters: #!cpp "{:#}" pretty-prints, a width such as #!cpp "{:2}" sets the indent, and a fill-and-align prefix such as #!cpp "{:.>#}" sets the indent character.

For the {fmt} library, the library ships a format_as helper. Note its behavior depends on the fmt version; see the FAQ entry for the details and a recipe for a full fmt::formatter specialization.

Serializing to other formats

Besides JSON text, a value can also be serialized to the more compact binary formats (BJData, BSON, CBOR, MessagePack, UBJSON).