a lightweight code generator - cog

Recently, I need to write a library to read and write JSON messages for C++. The library should be able to serialize/deserialize an message object to/from a JSON message. However, the messages schema can be changed from time to time for new requirements. So, I need to think a way to adapt the schema change easily.

In Java world, there are many mature JSON libraries support this, e.g. JSON-B, Gson, .... However, C++ doesn't have reflection. We cannot have C++ version of libraries like JSON-B and Gson. For C++, the only option is code generation. There are number of ways to do code generation. After some search on the web, I found a Python based code generator -- Cog, and here is a success story about using Cog. The tool works very good and it's lightweight. With the code generation, it saved me a lot of time when there is any schema change.