How can I stream elements from inside a JSON array using serde_json?

I have a 5GB JSON file which is an array of objects with fixed structure:

[
  {
    "first": "John",
    "last": "Doe",
    "email": "john.doe@yahoo.com"
  },
  {
    "first": "Anne",
    "last": "Ortha",
    "email": "anne.ortha@hotmail.com"
  },
  ....
]

I know that I can try to parse this file using the code shown in How can I deserialize JSON with a top-level array using Serde?:

use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Debug)]
struct User {
    first: String,
    last: String,
    email: String,
}

let users: Vec<User> = serde_json::from_str(file)?;

There are multiple problems:

1. It is first read as a string as a whole
2. After reading as string, it converts it into a vector of User structs (I don't want that)

I tried How I can I lazily read multiple JSON values from a file/stream in Rust? but it reads the whole file before printing anything and it prints the whole structure at once inside the loop. I was expecting one object at a time in the loop:

Ideally, parsing and processing of the (parsed) User object should happen simultaneously in two separate threads/tasks/routines or by making use of channel.

Streaming elements from a JSON array is possible, but requires some legwork. You must skip the leading [ and the intermittent , yourself, as well as detect the final ]. To parse individual array elements you need to use StreamDeserializer and extract a single item from it (so you can drop it and regain control of the IO reader). For example:

use serde::de::DeserializeOwned;
use serde_json::{self, Deserializer};
use std::io::{self, Read};

fn read_skipping_ws(mut reader: impl Read) -> io::Result<u8> {
    loop {
        let mut byte = 0u8;
        reader.read_exact(std::slice::from_mut(&mut byte))?;
        if !byte.is_ascii_whitespace() {
            return Ok(byte);
        }
    }
}

fn invalid_data(msg: &str) -> io::Error {
    io::Error::new(io::ErrorKind::InvalidData, msg)
}

fn deserialize_single<T: DeserializeOwned, R: Read>(reader: R) -> io::Result<T> {
    let next_obj = Deserializer::from_reader(reader).into_iter::<T>().next();
    match next_obj {
        Some(result) => result.map_err(Into::into),
        None => Err(invalid_data("premature EOF")),
    }
}

fn yield_next_obj<T: DeserializeOwned, R: Read>(
    mut reader: R,
    at_start: &mut bool,
) -> io::Result<Option<T>> {
    if !*at_start {
        *at_start = true;
        if read_skipping_ws(&mut reader)? == b'[' {
            // read the next char to see if the array is empty
            let peek = read_skipping_ws(&mut reader)?;
            if peek == b']' {
                Ok(None)
            } else {
                deserialize_single(io::Cursor::new([peek]).chain(reader)).map(Some)
            }
        } else {
            Err(invalid_data("`[` not found"))
        }
    } else {
        match read_skipping_ws(&mut reader)? {
            b',' => deserialize_single(reader).map(Some),
            b']' => Ok(None),
            _ => Err(invalid_data("`,` or `]` not found")),
        }
    }
}

pub fn iter_json_array<T: DeserializeOwned, R: Read>(
    mut reader: R,
) -> impl Iterator<Item = Result<T, io::Error>> {
    let mut at_start = false;
    std::iter::from_fn(move || yield_next_obj(&mut reader, &mut at_start).transpose())
}

Example usage:

fn main() {
    let data = r#"[
  {
    "first": "John",
    "last": "Doe",
    "email": "john.doe@yahoo.com"
  },
  {
    "first": "Anne",
    "last": "Ortha",
    "email": "anne.ortha@hotmail.com"
  }
]"#;
    use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

    #[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Debug)]
    struct User {
        first: String,
        last: String,
        email: String,
    }

    for user in iter_json_array(io::Cursor::new(&data)) {
        let user: User = user.unwrap();
        println!("{:?}", user);
    }
}

Playground

When using it in production, you'd open it as File instead of reading it to a string. As always, don't forget to wrap the File in a BufReader.