How to clone an object, is that possible?

[Iharob Al Asimi]

In a program I am writing I have an object containing another object, I read from the parent object and then discard it with json_object_put(). How can I keep the original child object or how can I copy it without converting it to a string and reparsing it?

[Eric Haszlakiewicz]

On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 3:02 PM, Iharob Al Asimi <iha...@gmail.com> wrote:

In a program I am writing I have an object containing another object, I read from the parent object and then discard it with json_object_put(). How can I keep the original child object or how can I copy it without converting it to a string and reparsing it?

If you want to keep using the original child object, simply call json_object_get() on the child to increment its reference count before calling json_object_put() on the parent.

If you really need a copy, sorry there currently isn't an implementation of a copy function, but it's certainly possible to write one, even using just the public API.  Basically, you'd just need to decode the type of the object with json_object_get_type(), call the appropriate json_object_new_* function depending on that, then iterate and recurse for objects of type json_type_object or json_type_array.
Probably the only thing you'd miss using something like that (vs a copy function provided by the library) is keeping anything set by json_object_set_serializer() and perhaps a bit of run-time efficiency.

Of course, if you're optimizing for *programmer* efficiency instead, converting it to a string and reparsing it certainly works. :)

Eric