Yesterday’s blog post about adding json2.js created a discussion on it’s use and Johann pointed out that there were already JSON parsing functions baked into XPages SSJS. Phil Riand added them back in 8.5.1 and it has actually been mentioned a number of times on various Blogs. So apologies to all for me not knowing about it. I guess I never bothered to look as I knew how to do it with the json2.js 🙂

Julian Buss added a wiki post about it years ago – http://xpageswiki.com/web/youatnotes/wiki-xpages.nsf/dx/Work_with_ServerSide_JavaScript

	var json = toJson( {a:[1,2,3]} ) //-> '{"a":[1,2,3]}'
	var jsObj = fromJson( '{"a":[1,2,3]}' ) //-> {a:[1,2,3]}
	isJson( '{"a":[1,2,3]}' ) //-> true

So ok I learned something new – happens a lot – but then I also got to thinking – as I mentioned yesterday JSON.parse and JSON.stringify are so ubiquitous I decided to write some code to minic the coding standard in SSJS. This code serves zero purpose other than to make the usage of JSON consistent between SSJS and CSJS. It is a short version of what I wrote about yesterday and does not require the addition of the json2.js to the database.

	if (typeof JSON !== 'object') {
		JSON = {};
	}
	JSON = {
		parse: function(str){
			return fromJson(str)
		},
		stringify: function(obj){
			return toJson(obj)
		}
	}

JSON is now ubiquitous in the world of JavaScript and the origins can be found a http://www.json.org/.

Douglas Crockford was very concerned about using eval() to convert strings to objects and so he created  json2.js which can be found here https://github.com/douglascrockford/JSON-js/blob/master/json2.js. If you look at the code there is a huge RegEx in the middle of it which purposefully ensures that there is no dangerous code which the eval statement is run on. You should read the comments in the code – very insightful !

All browsers (IE8+) now support JSON.stringify or JSON.parse by default and we no longer need these functions to be added as an external library.

I found however that XPages SSJS does not seem to recognize the JSON object. So I added the json2.js code to an SSJS library and then added it as a resource within my XPage.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xp:view xmlns:xp="http://www.ibm.com/xsp/core">
	<xp:this.resources>
		<xp:script src="/json2.jss" clientSide="false"></xp:script>
	</xp:this.resources>
	<xp:repeat id="repeat1" rows="30" var="rep1">
		<xp:this.value><![CDATA[#{javascript:
			var temp ='[{"name": "marky"},{"name": "Billy"},{"name": "John"}]'
			return JSON.parse(temp)
		}]]>
	</xp:this.value>
		<xp:text escape="true" id="computedField1" value="#{javascript:rep1.name}"></xp:text>
		<hr />
	</xp:repeat>
</xp:view>

And with this I am now able to take a string of text – convert it safely to a JSON object and then use as the source for my repeat control.

This message was inspired by Tim’s Tripcony’s blog post.

I love the idea of storing data as a JSON string inside of a single notes document field. This would move using Lotus Notes closer and closer to a modern NoSQL system, making applications more and more portable – love that idea.

However – this renders searching by field useless – which is usually one of the  requirements of an application.