JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Pointer
RFC 6901
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) P. Bryan, Ed.
Request for Comments: 6901 Salesforce.com
Category: Standards Track K. Zyp
ISSN: 2070-1721 SitePen (USA)
M. Nottingham, Ed.
Akamai
April 2013
JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Pointer
Abstract
JSON Pointer defines a string syntax for identifying a specific value
within a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) document.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6901.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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described in the Simplified BSD License.
Bryan, et al. Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 6901 JSON Pointer April 2013
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
4. Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
5. JSON String Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. URI Fragment Identifier Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
7. Error Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
9. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1. Introduction
This specification defines JSON Pointer, a string syntax for
identifying a specific value within a JavaScript Object Notation
(JSON) document [RFC4627]. JSON Pointer is intended to be easily
expressed in JSON string values as well as Uniform Resource
Identifier (URI) [RFC3986] fragment identifiers.
2. Conventions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
This specification expresses normative syntax rules using Augmented
Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) [RFC5234] notation.
3. Syntax
A JSON Pointer is a Unicode string (see [RFC4627], Section 3)
containing a sequence of zero or more reference tokens, each prefixed
by a '/' (%x2F) character.
Because the characters '~' (%x7E) and '/' (%x2F) have special
meanings in JSON Pointer, '~' needs to be encoded as '~0' and '/'
needs to be encoded as '~1' when these characters appear in a
reference token.
Bryan, et al. Standards Track [Page 2]
RFC 6901 JSON Pointer April 2013
The ABNF syntax of a JSON Pointer is:
json-pointer = *( "/" reference-token )
reference-token = *( unescaped / escaped )
unescaped = %x00-2E / %x30-7D / %x7F-10FFFF
; %x2F ('/') and %x7E ('~') are excluded from 'unescaped'
escaped = "~" ( "0" / "1" )
; representing '~' and '/', respectively
It is an error condition if a JSON Pointer value does not conform to
this syntax (see Section 7).
Note that JSON Pointers are specified in characters, not as bytes.
4. Evaluation
Evaluation of a JSON Pointer begins with a reference to the root
value of a JSON document and completes with a reference to some value
within the document. Each reference token in the JSON Pointer is
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