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Date: Fri, 13 May 2022 15:33:17 +0200
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Subject: [RFC] Add json_encode indent parameter
From: tdegroot96@gmail.com (Timon de Groot)

Hi internals,

Almost a year ago I first proposed my RFC draft to introduce a new 
json_encode parameter 'indent'. I have received a lot of feedback on the 
change, very insightful. The feedback can be boiled down to:
- Accepting user input characters means you could create invalid JSON.
   Do we want that? Should it be complying with the spec[1]?
- Preference for pure types, so int OR string, not both.

So I think I made the change more complex than it should have been and 
considered the three options:
   1) Accept indent as an int, which will result in N spaces of indent 
per indentation level.
   2) Accept indent as a string, which will result in string N per 
indentation level.
   3) Accept indent as an int and indent_char as string, which will 
result in N * indent_char per indentation level.

Option 1 seems very simple and feasible while not being confusing.
Option 2 seems feasible, but somewhat more complex, because user input 
should be validated.
Option 3 seems very flexible, but in my opinion very confusing at the 
same time, while I'm not sure there's even a use case for this level of 
flexibility.

I have updated the pull request[2] and RFC[3] to be based on option 1, 
as I think this offers clear functionality and I feel like I can't 
really go wrong with the indent parameter as an int.

Please let me know what your thoughts are and what needs to be done to 
get this RFC going forward!

--

Kind regards,
Timon

[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4627
[2] https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/7093
[3] https://wiki.php.net/rfc/json_encode_indentation