Using libbson In Your C Program¶

Include bson.h¶

All libbson’s functions and types are available in one header file. Simply include bson.h:

hello_bson.c¶

#include <stdio.h>
#include <bson.h>

int
main (int argc, const char **argv)
{
   bson_t *b;
   char *j;

   b = BCON_NEW ("hello", BCON_UTF8 ("bson!"));
   j = bson_as_canonical_extended_json (b, NULL);
   printf ("%s\n", j);

   bson_free (j);
   bson_destroy (b);

   return 0;
}

CMake¶

The libbson installation includes a CMake config-file package, so you can use CMake’s find_package command to find libbson’s header and library paths and link to libbson:

CMakeLists.txt¶

# Specify the minimum version you require.
find_package (libbson-1.0 1.7 REQUIRED)

message ("--   libbson found version \"${BSON_VERSION}\"")
message ("--   libbson include path \"${BSON_INCLUDE_DIRS}\"")
message ("--   libbson libraries \"${BSON_LIBRARIES}\"")

# The "hello_bson.c" sample program is shared among four tests.
add_executable (hello_bson ../../hello_bson.c)
target_include_directories (hello_bson PRIVATE ${BSON_INCLUDE_DIRS})
target_link_libraries (hello_bson PRIVATE ${BSON_LIBRARIES})
target_compile_definitions (hello_bson PRIVATE ${BSON_DEFINITIONS})

By default, libbson is dynamically linked. You can use libbson as a static library instead: Use the included libbson-static-1.0 config-file package and (on Unix) link to pthread:

# Specify the minimum version you require.
find_package (libbson-static-1.0 1.7 REQUIRED)

message ("--   libbson-static found version \"${BSON_STATIC_VERSION}\"")
message ("--   libbson-static include path \"${BSON_STATIC_INCLUDE_DIRS}\"")
message ("--   libbson-static libraries \"${BSON_STATIC_LIBRARIES}\"")

# The "hello_bson.c" sample program is shared among four tests.
add_executable (hello_bson ../../hello_bson.c)
target_include_directories (hello_bson PRIVATE ${BSON_STATIC_INCLUDE_DIRS})
target_link_libraries (hello_bson PRIVATE ${BSON_STATIC_LIBRARIES})
target_compile_definitions (hello_bson PRIVATE ${BSON_STATIC_DEFINITIONS})

pkg-config¶

If you’re not using CMake, use pkg-config on the command line to set header and library paths:

gcc -o hello_bson hello_bson.c $(pkg-config --libs --cflags libbson-1.0)

Or to statically link to libbson:

gcc -o hello_bson hello_bson.c $(pkg-config --libs --cflags libbson-static-1.0)