string_t dump(const int indent = -1,
              const char indent_char = ' ',
              const bool ensure_ascii = false,
              const error_handler_t error_handler = error_handler_t::strict) const;

Serialization function for JSON values. The function tries to mimic Python's json.dumps() function, and currently supports its indent and ensure_ascii parameters.

indent (in) : If indent is nonnegative, then array elements and object members will be pretty-printed with that indent level. An indent level of 0 will only insert newlines. -1 (the default) selects the most compact representation.

indent_char (in) : The character to use for indentation if indent is greater than 0. The default is (space).

ensure_ascii (in) : If ensure_ascii is true, all non-ASCII characters in the output are escaped with \uXXXX sequences, and the result consists of ASCII characters only.

error_handler (in) : how to react on decoding errors; there are three possible values (see error_handler_t: strict (throws and exception in case a decoding error occurs; default), replace (replace invalid UTF-8 sequences with U+FFFD), and ignore (ignore invalid UTF-8 sequences during serialization; all bytes are copied to the output unchanged)).

string containing the serialization of the JSON value

Strong guarantee: if an exception is thrown, there are no changes to any JSON value.

Throws type_error.316 if a string stored inside the JSON value is not UTF-8 encoded and error_handler is set to strict

Linear.

Binary values are serialized as object containing two keys:

• "bytes": an array of bytes as integers
• "subtype": the subtype as integer or #!json null if the binary has no subtype

??? example

The following example shows the effect of different `indent`, `indent_char`, and `ensure_ascii` parameters to the
result of the serialization.

```cpp
--8<-- "examples/dump.cpp"
```

Output:

```json
--8<-- "examples/dump.output"
```

• Added in version 1.0.0.
• Indentation character indent_char, option ensure_ascii and exceptions added in version 3.0.0.
• Error handlers added in version 3.4.0.
• Serialization of binary values added in version 3.8.0.