Unmarshal a json stream (not newline-separated)

I want to turn a stream of JSON into a stream of objects. This is easy to do with newline-separated JSON. From the Go docs: https://golang.org/pkg/encoding/json/#Decoder.Buffered

However, I need to generate a stream from JSON arrays like this one:

        [{"Name": "Ed", "Text": "Knock knock."},
        {"Name": "Sam", "Text": "Who's there?"},
        {"Name": "Ed", "Text": "Go fmt."},
        {"Name": "Sam", "Text": "Go fmt who?"},
        {"Name": "Ed", "Text": "Go fmt yourself!"}]

What is a performant way to do this?

I've considered this method:

1. Drop the outside angle brackets
2. When there are matching top-level curly braces, unmarshal the string between the braces (inclusive) to get one top-level object at a time.

I don't want to do it because of the performance implications of scanning each portion of the string twice.

The best alternative I can thing of is to copy the source code for the decoder in the Golang encoding/json package and modify it so it returns a Reader that spits out one object at a time. But that seems like too much work for such a simple requirement.

Is there a better way to decode a stream that is a JSON array?

EDIT

I'm looking to parse JSON with nested objects and arbitrary structure.

You can use a streaming parser. For example megajson's scanner:

package main
import (
"fmt"
"strings"
"github.com/benbjohnson/megajson/scanner"
)
func main() {
// our incoming data
rdr := strings.NewReader(`[
{"Name": "Ed", "Text": "Knock knock."},
{"Name": "Sam", "Text": "Who's there?"},
{"Name": "Ed", "Text": "Go fmt."},
{"Name": "Sam", "Text": "Go fmt who?"},
{"Name": "Ed", "Text": "Go fmt yourself!"}
]`)
// we want to create a list of these
type Object struct {
Name string
Text string
}
objects := make([]Object, 0)
// scan the JSON as we read
s := scanner.NewScanner(rdr)
// this is how we keep track of where we are parsing the JSON
// if you needed to support nested objects you would need to
// use a stack here ([]state{}) and push / pop each time you
// see a brace
var state struct {
inKey   bool
lastKey string
object  Object
}
for {
tok, data, err := s.Scan()
if err != nil {
break
}
switch tok {
case scanner.TLBRACE:
// just saw '{' so start a new object
state.inKey = true
state.lastKey = ""
state.object = Object{}
case scanner.TRBRACE:
// just saw '}' so store the object
objects = append(objects, state.object)
case scanner.TSTRING:
// for `key: value`, we just parsed 'key'
if state.inKey {
state.lastKey = string(data)
} else {
// now we are on `value`
if state.lastKey == "Name" {
state.object.Name = string(data)
} else {
state.object.Text = string(data)
}
}
state.inKey = !state.inKey
}
}
fmt.Println(objects)
}

This is probably as efficient as you can get, but it does require a lot of manual processing.

Assume the json stream like:

{"Name": "Ed", "Text": "Knock knock."}{"Name": "Sam", "Text": "Who's there?"}{"Name": "Ed", "Text": "Go fmt."}

I have idea, pseudo code like below:

1: skip prefix whitespace
2: if first char not {, throw error
3: load some chars, and find the first "}"
4: if found, try json.Unmarshal()
5: if unmarshal fail, load more chars, and find second "}"
6: redo STEP 4

Below is an implementation, already working in my project:

package json
import (
"bytes"
j "encoding/json"
"errors"
"io"
"strings"
)
// Stream represent a json stream
type Stream struct {
stream *bytes.Buffer
object *bytes.Buffer
scrap  *bytes.Buffer
}
// NewStream return a Stream that based on src
func NewStream(src []byte) *Stream {
return &Stream{
stream: bytes.NewBuffer(src),
object: new(bytes.Buffer),
scrap:  new(bytes.Buffer),
}
}
// Read read a json object
func (s *Stream) Read() ([]byte, error) {
var obj []byte
for {
// read a rune from stream
r, _, err := s.stream.ReadRune()
switch err {
case nil:
case io.EOF:
if strings.TrimSpace(s.object.String()) != "" {
return nil, errors.New("Invalid JSON")
}
fallthrough
default:
return nil, err
}
// write the rune to object buffer
if _, err := s.object.WriteRune(r); err != nil {
return nil, err
}
if r == '}' {
obj = s.object.Bytes()
// check whether json string valid
err := j.Compact(s.scrap, obj)
s.scrap.Reset()
if err != nil {
continue
}
s.object.Reset()
break
}
}
return obj, nil
}

Usage like below:

func process(src []byte) error {
s := json.NewStream(src)
for {
obj, err := s.Read()
switch err {
case nil:
case io.EOF:
return nil 
default:
return err 
}   
// now you can try to decode the obj to a struct/map/...
// it is also support mix stream, ex.:
a = new(TypeOne)
b = new(TypeTwo)
if err := j.Unmarshal(obj, a); err == nil && a.Error != "" {
// it is a TypeOne object
} else if err := j.Unmarshal(obj, b); err == nil && a.ID != "" {
// it is a TypeTwo object
} else {
// unkown type
}
}
return nil
}