# lloyd/yajl

A fast streaming JSON parsing library in C.

Repository: https://github.com/lloyd/yajl
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/yajl
Homepage: http://lloyd.github.com/yajl
Language: C
License: ISC
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-08-24T02:36:28+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 77/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:39:23.370411+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 6472, "days_push": 10, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2227, forks 444 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:28.844576+00:00)

## What it is
YAJL (Yet Another JSON Library) is a small, portable ANSI C library for parsing and generating JSON using a streaming, callback-based (SAX-style) model. It is data-representation independent, fast, memory-efficient, and provides verbose error messages with input context.

## Use cases
- parse large JSON files without loading them fully into memory
- incrementally parse JSON from a network stream
- build a custom in-memory JSON representation in C
- write a JSON filter or converter tool like a pretty printer
- embed a fast robust JSON parser in a C or C++ application
- convert JSON to another format such as XML

## When to choose
- you need streaming/incremental JSON parsing in C
- you want control over the in-memory data representation
- minimal CPU and memory footprint matters
- you need a permissively licensed, portable ANSI C JSON library

## When to avoid
- you want a ready-made DOM/tree API out of the box
- you are working in a higher-level language with native JSON support
- you need JSON Schema validation or JSONPath queries

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: maintenance
- function: parser, serialization, json
- domain: parsers, developer-tools, apis
- platform: c, cpp, cross-platform, cli
- tags: json-parser, streaming-parsing, callback-based, ansi-c, sax-style

## Member repositories
- lloyd/yajl (main) score 77

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:28.844576+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:44:49.705981+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/lloyd/yajl (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:28.844576+00:00, sha 99c8c61688bd)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.