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/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 import libbson’s CMake target and link to libbson (as a shared library):

CMakeLists.txt

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

# The "hello_bson.c" sample program is shared among four tests.
add_executable (hello_bson ../../hello_bson.c)
target_link_libraries (hello_bson PRIVATE mongo::bson_shared)

You can also use libbson as a static library instead: Use the mongo::bson_static CMake target:

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

# The "hello_bson.c" sample program is shared among four tests.
add_executable (hello_bson ../../hello_bson.c)
target_link_libraries (hello_bson PRIVATE mongo::bson_static)

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)