Any Method to remove comment characters from JSON response in Xcode? - iphone

Question

I am new to JSON. Are there any methods in JSON parser to remove the comment characters from a response.
Eg. //{"response":"success".......
its SBJson for iPhone.
from http://code.google.com/p/json-framework

Answer 1

The JSON grammar doesn't allow comments. That doesn't answer your question obviously, but I suspect you'll have to do some string manipulation and replace all those comment characters with empty strings and parse it with the JSON library only after doing so.

Answer 2

Nowadays, very easy to do this:
Here's how you get and parse actual json
// normal json no comments
func getStuff() {
guard let url = URL(string: "http://you.com/x.json") else { return print("?") }
let configuration = URLSessionConfiguration.ephemeral
aSession = URLSession(configuration: configuration)
aSession.dataTask(with: url) { [weak self] data, response, error in
guard let _ = self else { return print("woe") }
guard let data = data else { return print("woe") }
do {
let result = try JSONDecoder().decode(YourStructure.self, from: data)
localBlah = Dictionary(uniqueKeysWithValues: result.whatever)
} catch let error {
print(error)
}
}.resume()
}
Here's how you get and parse "json" which has simple comment lines:
During development, remove #comment lines from "json":
Notice the line of code which decodes the data :
let result = try JSONDecoder().decode(YourStructure.self, from: data)
Simply paste in these three lines of code, before, that line:
let s = String(decoding: data, as: UTF8.self)
let fixed = s.replacingOccurrences(
of: "(?m)^#.*",
with: "",
options: .regularExpression)
guard let data2: Data = fixed.data(using: .utf8) else { return print("woe") }
let result = try JSONDecoder().decode(YourStructure.self, from: data2)
So during development in your "json" on your server, you can have things like ..
"measures": [{
"screen": "options",
"topMargin": 25,
#don 't change topmargin anyone
"leftMargin": 12,
#Note,
Steve prefers 13. But everyone
else prefers 12. "rightMargin": 20,
},
It's that simple.
Important note on using regex:
Regex is a sophisticated process. The example regex used in this post simply means
"Delete any full lines, which, start with a '#'
So, it only understands simple "full-line" comments.
How to write regex is beyond the scope of this QA.
When you pre-munge the text at let fixed =, use whatever regex or other technique you wish.

Answer 3

The JSON parsers are very finicky about what is at the start of a JSON block to parse - they DO NOT like characters other than "{" at the start (at least that's what I found with TouchJSON, and it sounds like your case with SBJson is similar).
So just take your string and eliminate any characters before the opening "{", then you can parse:
NSRange startJSONRange = [myJSONString rangeOfString:#"{"];
startJSONRange.length = myJSONString.length - startJSONRange.location;
NSString *correctJSONString = [myJSONString substringWithRange:startJSONRange];
// parse correctJSONString
That will work, but the REAL fix is to tell whoever is sending you JSON to cut out the nonsense and send real JSON.