serialization - Standardized way to serialize JSON to query string?

Question

I'm trying to build a restful API and I'm struggling on how to serialize JSON data to a HTTP query string.

There are a number of mandatory and optional arguments that need to be passed in the request, e.g (represented as a JSON object below):

{
   "-columns" : [
      "name",
      "column"
   ],
   "-where" : {
      "-or" : {
         "customer_id" : 1,
         "services" : "schedule"
      }
   },
   "-limit" : 5,
   "return" : "table"
}

I need to support a various number of different clients so I'm looking for a standardized way to convert this json object to a query string. Is there one, and how does it look?

Another alternative is to allow users to just pass along the json object in a message body, but I read that I should avoid it (HTTP GET with request body).

Any thoughts?

Edit for clarification:

Listing how some different languages encodes the given json object above:

• jQuery using $.param: -columns[]=name&-columns[]=column&-where[-or][customer_id]=1&-where[-or][services]=schedule&-limit=5&return=column
• PHP using http_build_query: -columns[0]=name&-columns[1]=column&-where[-or][customer_id]=1&-where[-or][services]=schedule&-limit=5&return=column
• Perl using URI::query_form: -columns=name&-columns=column&-where=HASH(0x59d6eb8)&-limit=5&return=column
• Perl using complex_to_query: -columns:0=name&-columns:1=column&-limit=5&-where.-or.customer_id=1&-where.-or.services=schedule&return=column

jQuery and PHP is very similar. Perl using complex_to_query is also pretty similar to them. But none look exactly the same.

Answer 1

URL-encode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent-encoding) your JSON text and put it into a single query string parameter. for example, if you want to pass {"val": 1}:

mysite.com/path?json=%7B%22val%22%3A%201%7D

Note that if your JSON gets too long then you will run into a URL length limitation problem. In which case I would use POST with a body (yes, I know, sending a POST when you want to fetch something is not "pure" and does not fit well into the REST paradigm, but neither is your domain specific JSON-based query language).