I'm using JsonFX (it's a requirement, Json.Net isn't an option) to pull values out of Json, but I don't want to have to create a class to deserialize to for every bit of Json that I want to parse. So if I have this bit of JSON:
{
Parent:
{
Name: "John",
Child:
{
Name: "Bob",
Age: 20
}
}
}
I'd like to randomly access Child.Name. With Json.Net, I'd just do JObject.Parse(json)["Parent"]["Child"]["Name"]. I need to do the same, using JsonFX.
Using the debugger, I can see that this:
Object results = JsonFx.Json.JsonReader.Deserialize(response);
Pretty much gets me there. If I look at results, it's essentially a dictionary, with all of the data in a format that I would expect. The problem is, because it's an Object, I can't access any of those values. results["Parent"] doesn't compile.
How can I get at these values, without creating a class that mirrors the data?
JsonFX is awesome. Just read it into a dynamic and access the data.
dynamic j = new JsonFx.Json.JsonReader().Read( response );
string ParentName = j.Parent.Name;
string ChildName = j.Parent.Child.Name;
// ...
Related
I'm using Firestore database and i want to update some fields from a document.
var updateFields = {
"completedByUid": authRepo.getUID(),
"completed": currentTime,
};
return await docRef.update(updateFields);
Instead of typing the properyName manually how can i get the name directly from an object Object, and by this avoiding typing it incorrectly or outdated.
Let's say i have an object like:
#JsonSerializable()
class OrderModel {
String? completedByUid;
String? completed;
}
and i want to get the serialization name something like:
var updateFields = {
OrderModel.completedByUid: authRepo.getUID(),
or
var updateFields = {
order.completedByUid.properyName: authRepo.getUID(),
Normally this would be a use for reflection but that might be overkill.
I think the design pattern you could use is a constant that you use to both set and read the values, like so:
const String ORDER_MODEL_COMPLETED_BY_UID_PROPERTY = "completedByUid";
This doesn't exactly guarantee a match if, for example, some existing data is present and may have a name mismatch.
For an answer based on reflection, see this answer.
I am making a weather application. I basically created a class where I will only get data from API and return them as needed. I have variables like cityName, currentWeather etc.
Problem is sometimes API doesn't provide them all so I need to check if they are nil or not before return them. What comes to my mind is set variables like this first:
private var cityNamePrivate: String!
and then
var cityNamePublic: String {
if cityNamePrivate == nil {
//
}
else { return cityNamePrivate }
But as you can as imagine, its very bad because I have a lots of variables. Is there any better logic for this? Should I just return them and check later in wherever I send them?
The problem here is that you will have many variables to deal with. It's not just returning them from the API, it's also dealing with them in your app and perhaps in some processing code.
One solution is to have a big class or struct with many properties. This will work very well, is straightforward to implement but will require lots of repetitive code. Moreover, it will require to change your API and all your code, whenever some new properties are made available by the remote web service.
Another approach is to have replace the big inflexible class or struct, with a dynamic container, e.g. an array of items [ Item ] or a dictionary that associates names to items [ String : Item ]. If the data is just strings, it's straightforward. If it's several types, you may have to have to implement a small type system for the elements. Example:
var x : [ String: String] = [:]
x["city"]="Strasbourg"
x["temperature"]="34°C"
struct Item {
var name : String
var value : String
}
var y : [ Item ] = [Item(name:"city",value:"Strasbourg"),
Item(name:"temperature", value:"34°C")]
The other advantage of this approach is that you stay loyal to the semantics: an information that is not available in the API (e.g. "unknown") is not the same as a default value. I.e. if the weather API does not return a temperature, you will not display 0 in your app. because 0 is not the same as "unknown". While strings are more robust in this matter, the absence of a name is not the same as an empty name.
This last remark suggests that in your current scheme, of having a big data transfer object, you should consider to keep the properties as optional, and move the responsibility for the processing of unknown data to your app.
I'm trying to serialize data into / from my classes, derived from MonoBehaviour, which cannot be created from client code (e.g., with the new keyword), but rather must be created by a Unity3D-specific method, GameObject.AddComponent<T>(). How can I use the YamlDotNet framework to populate my classes with values without having to create an adapter for each one? Is there some sort of built-in adapter that I can configure, such that YamlDotNet doesn't instantiate the class it's trying to serialize to?
A typical file might contain a mapping of items, e.g.,
%YAML 1.1
%TAG !invt! _PathwaysEngine.Inventory.
%TAG !intf! _PathwaysEngine.Adventure.
---
Backpack_01: !invt!Item+yml
mass: 2
desc:
nouns: /^bag|(back)?pack|sack|container$/
description: |
Your backpack is only slightly worn, and...
rand_descriptions:
- "It's flaps twirl in the breeze."
- "You stare at it. You feel enriched."
MagLite_LR05: !invt!Lamp+yml
cost: 56
mass: 2
time: 5760
desc:
nouns: /^light|flashlight|maglite|lr_05$/
description: |
On the side of this flashlight is a label...
(Type "light" to turn it on and off.)
...
Where the tags are the fully specified class names of my Items, e.g., PathwaysEngine.Inventory.Lamp+yml, PathwaysEngine is the namespace I use for my game engine code, Inventory deals with items & whatnot, and Lamp+yml is how the compiler denotes a nested class, yml inside Lamp. Lamp+yml might look like this:
public partial class Lamp : Item, IWearable {
public new class yml : Item.yml {
public float time {get;set;}
public void Deserialize(Lamp o) {
base.Deserialize((Item) o);
o.time = time;
}
}
}
I call Deserialize() on all objects that derive from Thing from Awake(), i.e., once the MonoBehaviour classes exist in the game. Elsewhere, I've already created a pretty complicated Dictionary filled with objects of type Someclass+yml, and then Deserialize takes an instance of the real, runtime class Someclass and populates it with values. There's got to be a cleaner way to do this, right?
How can I:
Tell the Deserializer what my classes are?
See the second edit for a good solution for the above issue
Get the data without it attempting to create my MonoBehaviour-derived classes?
Edit: I've since worked at the problem, and have found out a good way of dealing with custom data (in my particular case of trying to parse regexes out of my data, and having them not be considered strings & therefore, un-castable to regex) is to use a IYamlTypeConverter for that particular string. Using YamlDotNet with Unity3D MonoBehaviours, however, is still an issue.
Another Edit: The above examples use a pretty ugly way of determining types. In my case, the best thing to do was to register the tags first with the deserializer, e.g.,
var pre = "tag:yaml.org,2002:";
var tags = new Dictionary<string,Type> {
{ "regex", typeof(Regex) },
{ "date", typeof(DateTime) },
{ "item", typeof(Item) }};
foreach (var tag in tags)
deserializer.RegisterTagMapping(
pre+tag.Key, tag.Value);
Then, I use the !!tag notation in the *.yml file, e.g.,
%YAML 1.1
---
Special Item: !!item
nouns: /thing|item|object/
someBoolean: true
Start Date: !!date 2015-12-17
some regex: !!regex /matches\s+whatever/
...
You can pass a custom implementation of IObjectFactory to the constructor of the Deserializer class. Every time the deserializer needs to create an instance of an object, it will use the IObjectFactory to create it.
Notice that your factory will be responsible for creating instances of every type that is deserialized. The easiest way to implement it is to create a decorator around DefaultObjectFactory, such as:
class UnityObjectFactory : IObjectFactory
{
private readonly DefaultObjectFactory DefaultFactory =
new DefaultObjectFactory();
public object Create(Type type)
{
// You can use specific types manually
if (type == typeof(MyCustomType))
{
return GameObject.AddComponent<MyCustomType>();
}
// Or use a marker interface
else if (typeof(IMyMarkerInterface).IsAssignableFrom(type))
{
return typeof(GameObject)
.GetMethod("AddComponent")
.MakeGenericMethod(type)
.Invoke();
}
// Delegate unknown types to the default factory
else
{
return DefaultFactory(type);
}
}
}
There is an existing question that has much of what I'm after:
Extracting Raw JSON as String inside a Spray POST route
But it stops short without explaining how to get the actual Json string representation out of the Directive[String]. I'm trying to send Json data to Kafka as a string (which the Kafka Producer serializes), so I'm trying to extract the Json in string form. I will do the marshalling to an entity at the other end in the Kafka consumer. The answer link above gets me close:
def rawJson = extract { _.request.entity.asString}
case "value2" => rawJson{ json =>// use the json }
But I end up with Directive[String]. How do I get the String out?
The example you referenced should work. You would use the rawJson directive they defined to wrap your inner route, and the json string would be made available within that inner route.
In the example below, personJson is a String, extracted by the body of the request via the rawJson directive, and made available to the inner route where the rest of the work is done.
def rawJson = extract { _.request.entity.asString}
val personRoute = {
(post & path("persons")){
rawJson{ personJson =>
onSuccess(personService.addPerson(person)){ personWithId =>
complete(StatusCodes.Created, personWithId)
}
}
}
I came up with the following syntax which accomplishes my need to extract the Json in String form. At first I thought it inefficient that I was unmarshaling and then remarshaling again, but then I realized that this provides a form of immediate Json validation. But there may be more efficient ways to do that.
The API is all Spray. handleWith uses an implicit conversion to the RawWeatherData case class.
path("weather"/"data"/"json") {
handleWith { rawRecord: RawWeatherData =>
val rawJsonStr = rawRecord.toJson.toString
kafkaJsonRecordIngest(rawJsonStr)
rawRecord
}
}
One question I have about current Scala couchdb drivers is whether they can work with "partial" schemas". I'll try to explain what I mean: the libraries I've see seem to all want to do a complete conversion from JSON docs in the database to a Scala object, handle the Scala object, and convert it back to JSON. This is is fine if your application knows everything about that type of object --- especially if it is the sole piece of software interacting with that database. However, what if I want to write a little application that only knows about part of the JSON object: for example, what if I'm only interested in a 'mybook' component embedded like this:
{
_id: "0ea56a7ec317138700743cdb740f555a",
_rev: "2-3e15c3acfc3936abf10ea4f84a0aeced",
type: "user",
profiles: {
mybook: {
key: "AGW45HWH",
secret: "g4juh43ui9hg929gk4"
},
.. 6 or 7 other profiles
},
.. lots of other stuff
}
I really don't want to convert the whole JSON AST to a Scala object. On the other hand, in couchdb, you must save back the entire JSON doc, so this needs to be preserved somehow. I think what I really what is something like this:
class MyBook {
private val userJson: JObject = ... // full JSON retrieved from the database
lazy val _id: String = ... // parsed from the JSON
lazy val _rev: String = ... // parsed from the JSON
lazy val key: String = ... // parsed from the JSON
lazy val secret: String = ... // (ditto)
def withSecret(secret: String): MyBook = ... // new object with altered userJson
def save(db: CouchDB) = ... // save userJson back to couchdb
}
Advantages:
computationally cheaper to extract only needed fields
don't have to sync with database evolution except for 'mybook' part
more suitable for development with partial schemas
safer, because there is less change as inadvertently deleting fields if we didn't keep up with the database schema
Disadavantages:
domain objects in Scala are not pristinely independent of couch/JSON
more memory use per object
Is this possible with any of the current Scala drivers? With either of scouchdb or the new Sohva library, it seems not.
As long as you have a good JSON library and a good HTTP client library, implementing a schemaless CouchDB client library is really easy.
Here is an example in Java: code, tests.
My couchDB library uses spray-json for (de)serialization, which is very flexible and would enable you to ignore parts of a document but still save it. Let's look at a simplified example:
Say we have a document like this
{
dontcare: {
...
},
important: "foo"
}
Then you could declare a class to hold information from this document and define how the conversion is done:
case class Dummy(js:JsValue)
case class PartialDoc(dontcare: Dummy, important: String)
implicit object DummyFormat extends JsonFormat[Dummy] {
override def read(js:JsValue):Dummy = Dummy(js)
override def write(d:Dummy):JsValue = d.js
}
implicit val productFormat = jsonFormat2(PartialDoc)
This will ignore anything in dontcare but still safe it as a raw JSON AST. Of course this example is not as complex as the one in your question, but it should give you an idea how to solve your problem.