JSON authoring tools?

[Curt Carpenter]

I haven't used JSON to do anything but save and restore filled-out Lazarus forms so this may be a foolish question, but here goes: 

I have a bunch of data that could be nicely saved and retrieved as JSON (name,value) pairs (or maybe (name,value,comment)triples), but putting the data into a JSON structure is tedious.  Are there any tools that make writing JSON less of a chore?  Something perhaps like a tool that would convert a string grid into a JSON file?

[Khrys]

Are there any tools that make writing JSON less of a chore?

A decent text editor 

[Thaddy]

Try the jsonviewer in the tools subdirectory of lazarus. It is not only a viewer, but also a composer.

Also, Lazarus lets you export a form to xml. You can subsequently use https://jsonformatter.org/xml-to-json to convert the to json.
Simple example for  TStringlist I found:

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1. {$mode objfpc}{$H+}
2. uses
3.   Classes, fpjson, jsonparser;
4.  
5. function StringListToJSON(StringList: TStrings): TJSONObject;
6. var
7.   i: Integer;
8.   JSONArray: TJSONArray;
9. begin
10.   JSONArray := TJSONArray.Create;
11.   try
12.     for i := 0 to StringList.Count - 1 do
13.     begin
14.       JSONArray.Add(StringList[i]);
15.     end;
16.    
17.     Result := TJSONObject.Create;
18.     Result.Add('data', JSONArray);
19.   except
20.     JSONArray.Free;
21.     raise;
22.   end;
23. end;
24.  
25. function StringListToJSONObjectKeyValues(StringList: TStrings): TJSONObject;
26. var
27.   i: Integer;
28. begin
29.   Result := TJSONObject.Create;
30.   try
31.     for i := 0 to StringList.Count - 1 do
32.     begin
33.       Result.Add(StringList.Names[i], StringList.ValueFromIndex[i]);
34.     end;
35.   except
36.     Result.Free;
37.     raise;
38.   end;
39. end;
40.  
41. // Usage example:
42. var
43.   MyList: TStringList;
44.   JSONData: TJSONObject;
45. begin
46.   MyList := TStringList.Create;
47.   try
48.     MyList.Add('Item 1=1');
49.     MyList.Add('Item 2=2');
50.     MyList.Add('Item 3=3');
51.    
52.     JSONData := StringListToJSONObjectKeyValues(MyList);
53.     try
54.       WriteLn(JSONData.FormatJSON); // Pretty printed JSON
55.       // or
56.       // WriteLn(JSONData.AsJSON);  // Compact JSON
57.     finally
58.       JSONData.Free;
59.     end;
60.   finally
61.     MyList.Free;
62.   end;
63. end.

[editted TStringlist ---> TStrings.]

Outputs for KV version:

Code: Text  [Select][+][-]

1. {
2.   "Item 1" : "1",
3.   "Item 2" : "2",
4.   "Item 3" : "3"
5. }

[avk]

I searched the Free Pascal and Lazarus Wiki for "json streaming"/"json serialization", and the choice turned out to be quite limited: the first and the second.

[wp]

Also: https://www.freepascal.org/~michael/articles/webdata/webdata.pdf

[Thaddy]

What I really do not understand is that people can not find fcl-json or lgenerics for that matter.
Both libraries are pretty straightforward to use and take minor effort.

[Curt Carpenter]

Try the jsonviewer in the tools subdirectory of lazarus. It is not only a viewer, but also a composer.
...

That's just the sort of tool I was looking for.  Thank you very much.
I haven't tried the string list to JSON code yet -- appreciate the example to study though and will get to it sometime today.

[Thaddy]

Curt,

Make sure you compile it in release mode for now.
There are some small "issues" - not in functionality, but some things need to be addressed. (to quote cdbc: hihi)

[Xenno]

I created an app with Lazarus to edit JSON. It is for Windows.
If you wanna take a look:

BS JSON – Seamless JSON Editor with Data Tools
https://youtu.be/Ijjb_Qzb6WU?si=8ErhBmhET19K7SKw

[Curt Carpenter]

I created an app with Lazarus to edit JSON. It is for Windows.
If you wanna take a look:

BS JSON – Seamless JSON Editor with Data Tools
https://youtu.be/Ijjb_Qzb6WU?si=8ErhBmhET19K7SKw

Thanks for the link:  that's an impressive and very capable tool for professionals, with way more capability than I need in my simple projects.  Nice looking software! 

[Xenno]

Thank you, Curt.

Just to share the technical, it's fully built with Lazarus using out-of-the-box Lazarus components and FreePascal units (virtual tree, synedit, fpjson, csvreadwrite). A little tweak for captionless form and apply BS PanelTrans's buttons.

Perhaps someday you need to use this app or inspire you to create more advance ones.