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= Google Summer of Code 2007 =

== Proposal for JSON Support for Apache Axis2/C ==

== Name ==

                T.G. Kasun Indrasiri

== Email ==
                [EMAIL PROTECTED]
                [EMAIL PROTECTED]

== Mentors ==

                Mr. Nandika Jayawardana 
                
== Project Title ==

                JSON Support for Axis2/C


== Synopsis ==

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a textual data representation format which 
is similar to XML but much more readable and more lightweight. Axis2C is a web 
service stack developed for processing and transfer XML messages. But now the 
idea of using XML for data exchange has extended to use other data exchange 
formats like JSON. 

The main objective of this project is to enable Axis 2/C to consume web 
services which use JSON as the data transfer format and also to deploy services 
which uses JSON for communication. JSON can be used for data transfer between 
hosts using JavaScript because it is understood by JavaScript directly.  If 
Axis 2/C supports JavaScript services then the JSON capability is available for 
Axis2C it leads to efficient usage of JavaScript services.

The mapping between XML and JSON is a critical factor. The direct mapping 
between XML and JSON is possible owe to the close relationship between XML and 
JSON. The conversion from XML to JSON or JSON to XML is pretty straight 
forward, but the problems arise when we are converting back to the original 
form from a converted form. In order to refrain from these issues various 
mapping conventions are used. Since there no standard convention in this 
process, ‘JSON Support for Axis2/C’ features a couple of most popular 
standards. The conversions that are going to be supported in this 
implementation are Badgerfish and Mapped conventions. 


== Project Deliverables ==


 *      An object model for JSON. This model should be build able from an 
incoming JSON string and also programmatically.
 *      A parser capable of parsing the JSON object model in memory and 
producing Stax events.
 *      Parsers and JSON object serializes for each and every supported 
conventions. 
 *      Modify Axis2C internal working so that it can switch between parsers 
for XML messages and JSON messages.
 *      Samples capable of sending and receiving JSON strings (Yahoo has JSON 
web services API).
 *      Appropriate development documentation for continuation of the project 
and user documentation.




== Project Details ==

The idea of this project is to give Axis2C the capability to populate and 
consume web services that use JSON.
JSON is a textual data representation format like XML. It is based on a subset 
of the JavaScript Programming Language. JSON is lightweight compare to XML, so 
it can be used for efficient transfer of data. Axis2C is a web service stack 
build for transfer of data between nodes. Axis2C uses a XML model called Axiom 
and Axiom is based on pull parsing of XML (Stax).  
When a XML message comes to Axis2C it uses a Stax parser to build the Axiom 
object model in the memory. To consume JSON data inside Axis2C it must be 
converted to the XML model in Axis2C (Axiom). This can be done by using the 
JSON parser which produces Stax events and XML data according to the JSON to 
XML mapping while reading an incoming JSON string. 
When a service wants to produce JSON data as the output it uses the JSON parser 
to convert the XML model to JSON string. Then this string will be sent over the 
wire. 
Problem with XML and JSON is that there is no direct transformation from XML to 
JSON. The problem occurs when converting a XML to JSON or JSON to XML and then 
trying to convert it back to the original. If we stick to the original JSON 
convention there is no guarantee that this kind of a transformation leads to 
the original message. To solve this issue various conventions have been adopted 
by JSON community. There are two such popular conventions, they are
 *      Badgerfish convention
 *      Mapped convention
It is important to support both these conversions since none of these 
conventions are standards. For each convention we support, we need to write a 
separate parser for that.
Both the popular conventions do not allow inline parsing of the JSON string and 
producing STAX events. For example when we convert a XML element to JSON the 
elements attribute values may appear after the element’s text value in the 
JSON object. The most efficient way to solve this issue is to construct the 
JSON object in memory from the given string and then parse this model in the 
memory to produce Stax events. But this is slow compare to the normal inline 
parsing of the XML parsers. But with a JSON object constructed in memory before 
the parsing is done makes development of different JSON to XML mapping 
conventions easy.  
The main advantage of JSON binding of Axis2C comes when deploying JavaScript 
services. Now the work is underway for using Spider Monkey JavaScript engine 
with Axis2C for hosting JavaScript services. JavaScript can understand JSON, so 
the incoming JSON can be directly passed to the JavaScript services. 
Another advantage is that JSON is a lightweight representation. JSON has few 
limitations, but it can be used for efficient transfer of data in the wire.  


== Project Plan ==

My objective is to provide Axis2C, the capability to populate and consume web 
services that use JSON.  As the first step I’m going to implement a JSON 
object model. After the creation of the JSON object model the implementation of 
the parsers should be start. In this case there should be two parses to be 
implemented for each convention. The Badgerfish parser and Mapped parser both 
has reader and a writer. Thereafter the parses should be integrated with Axis 
2/C


== Project Schedule ==


March 24th to April 11th 
The time since acceptance of projects and start of coding will be spent 
finalizing the design of the project. This will be done mostly using the 
Axis2C-dev lists.

April 11th to May 11th
Implementation of the JSON object model is done in this period.    

May 11th to June 11th
Mapped (convention) parser implementation. This includes both the writer and 
reader implementations for Mapped Convention JSON.

June 11th to July 11th
Badgerfish (convention) parser implementation. This includes both the writer 
and reader implementations for the Badgerfish Convention JSON.

July 11th August 20th
Integration of the parsers, with Axis2/C.  Writing and testing the test 
samples. Test samples will be written using an existing JSON web service API. 


== Biography ==

I’m a Computer Science and Engineering undergraduate in Department of 
Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. 
I have gained considerable amount of experience and knowledge on open source 
projects during my Software development career. In addition to that I used 
several open source products in the software development projects that I have 
involved with. I’m so impressed about the performance and the usability of 
Apache Software Foundation’s open source projects.
It’s a great experience and pleasure to join and contribute to the ASF 
projects and it would really help me out to shape up my future career.  


== References ==

University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. (http://www.mrt.ac.lk)

Computer Science and Engineering Department (http://www.cse.mrt.ac.lk)

JSON: http://www.json.org/

Badgerfish: http://badgerfish.ning.com/

Jettison: http://jettison.codehaus.org/

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