Open JSON file and parse it? (ExtendScript)

[Heimdaal]

I know that JSON isn't built into ExtendScript but even with the downloaded lib I do not understand how you are supposed to use this?

If I try and use #include in my jsx-file the entire script comes to a halt (nothing gets loaded)

main.jsx

#include "../js/libs/json2.js"
alert("this does not trigger! - script halted on line above");

So what's the approach here? Send the file path from JS to JSX, create a file object and read every line in JSX, returing the file string back to JS and then parse it?

[DBarranca]

I understand that you're referring to an HTML Panel context, am I correct?

If this is the case, yes, include will not work. You have to send the extension's path down to the JSX from the JS, then evaluate json2.js with $.evalFile().

From that point onwards, the JSON object should be available to your extendscript context.

Davide Barranca

[Heimdaal]

I moved the parsing to the JS file instead but it appears that you can't even use JSON there! JSON is undefined -_-
Why did Adobe make things so bloody complicated?

EDIT

I put the JSON.parse() inside a try-catch and I'm getting syntax errors (which is weird as I've used several online validators on my JSON code)

Exception:SyntaxError: Unexpected token :

JSON

{
    "lolk": [
        {
            "icon": "/img/picA.png",
            "path": "/scripts/file.a",
            "text": "somethingA"
        },
        {
            "icon": "/img/picB.png",
            "path": "/scripts/file.b",
            "text": "somethingB"
        },
        {
            "icon": "/img/picC.png",
            "path": "/scripts/file.c",
            "text": "somethingC"
        }
    ]
}

EDIT2
JSON.parse() seems to be completely broken?

try{
    var lol = JSON.parse("{'lolk':'stuff'}"); // Exception:SyntaxError: Unexpected token '
    alert(lol);
} catch(e) {
    alert("Exception:" + e + "\nCould not run JSON.parse()");
}

[CodeARoni]

If you want to parse JSON in extendscript, you can use a polyfill. Here's an easy example you can copy/paste: generator-gizmo/rootscript.jsx at master · codearoni/generator-gizmo · GitHub

Just paste that at the top of you extendscript file and you should be good to go.

[Heimdaal · Accepted solution]

Summary

-The JSON -library json2.js can be "included" in the main.js file by running evalFile(pathToFile). I assume this also works in JSX. Thanks goes to Davide Barranca for showing us the way!

-You cannot use #include in the JSX file for Photoshop as this will completely break the execution

-When reading the file, you have to do it all in one go - not line-by-line (see below).

I read the JSON-file incorrectly, which broke JSON.parse()

For some reason I had setup the function that did the reading, to read the file row-by-row, like this:

JSX

    file = new File(filePath);
    file.open("r", "TEXT");
    var fileString = "";
    while (!file.eof){
        var line = file.readln();
        if (fileString.indexOf(line) == -1){
            fileString += line;
        }
    }
    return fileString;

Which seems to add characters that the parser does not like.

I changed it so that it just reads the entire file

JSX

    var scriptFile = File(filePath);
    scriptFile.open('r');
    var content = scriptFile.read();
    scriptFile.close();