On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 11:59 AM, Stephen Hemminger
[off-list ref] wrote:

On Fri, 27 May 2016 21:37:14 -0700
Roopa Prabhu [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Sample output:
$bridge -j fdb show
[{
        "mac": "44:38:39:00:69:88",
        "dev": "swp2s0",
        "vlan": 2,
        "master": "br0",
        "state": "permanent"
    },{
        "mac": "00:02:00:00:00:01",
        "dev": "swp2s0",
        "vlan": 2,
        "master": "br0"
    },{
        "mac": "00:02:00:00:00:02",
        "dev": "swp2s1",
        "vlan": 2,
        "master": "br0"
    },{
        "mac": "44:38:39:00:69:89",
        "dev": "swp2s1",
        "master": "br0",
        "state": "permanent"
    },{
        "mac": "44:38:39:00:69:89",
        "dev": "swp2s1",
        "vlan": 2,
        "master": "br0",
        "state": "permanent"
    },{
        "mac": "44:38:39:00:69:88",
        "dev": "br0",
        "master": "br0",
        "state": "permanent"
    }
    ]

In most JSON I have seen, the output would be:

{
  "fdb" : [
     {
         "mac": "44:38:39:00:69:88",
         "dev": "swp2s0",
         "vlan": 2,
         "master": "br0",
         "state": "permanent"
     },
...
   ]
}

I.e never a bare array.

Yes Stephen, Adding an extra level would be one way to force the
format to json-object. And that would definitely be the way to do it
if we ever added a top level json dump - something like - "bridge -j
show".

But in the case of "bridge -j fdb show" that level is redundant. To be
consistent we would have to add that extra level to all json dumps
(even if they were already objects; such as the "bridge -j vlan
show").The google json style guide recommends against adding hierarchy
unless needed. And it is not that uncommon in java to have a
json-array of objects for e.g. http://json-schema.org/example1.html
talks about a schema that is an "array of products".

What do you recommend?