# bson_as_json()

## Synopsis

    char *
    bson_as_json (const bson_t *bson, size_t *length);

## Parameters

- `bson`: A bson_t.
- `length`: An optional location for the length of the resulting string.

## Description

The bson_as_json() function shall encode `bson` as a UTF-8 string using libbson’s legacy JSON format. This function is superseded by bson_as_canonical_extended_json() and bson_as_relaxed_extended_json(), which use the same MongoDB Extended JSON format as all other MongoDB drivers.

The caller is responsible for freeing the resulting UTF-8 encoded string by calling bson_free() with the result.

If non-NULL, `length` will be set to the length of the result in bytes.

## Returns

If successful, a newly allocated UTF-8 encoded string and `length` is set.

Upon failure, NULL is returned.

## Example

    #include <bson/bson.h>

    int main ()
    {
       bson_t bson;
       char *str;

       bson_init (&bson);
       BSON_APPEND_UTF8 (&bson, "0", "foo");
       BSON_APPEND_UTF8 (&bson, "1", "bar");

       str = bson_as_json (&bson, NULL);
       /* Prints
        * { "0" : "foo", "1" : "bar" }
        */
       printf ("%s\n", str);
       bson_free (str);

       bson_destroy (&bson);
    }

### See Also:

bson_array_as_json

bson_as_canonical_extended_json

bson_as_relaxed_extended_json