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From: Mikko <mikko.levanto@iki.fi>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Add JSON, XML, CSV to Baby X resource compiler
Date: Tue, 21 May 2024 11:27:46 +0300
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On 2024-05-20 10:58:20 +0000, Malcolm McLean said:

> On 20/05/2024 10:23, Mikko wrote:
>> On 2024-05-19 22:41:36 +0000, bart said:
>> 
>>> On 19/05/2024 11:16, Malcolm McLean wrote:
>>>> The Baby X resource compiler takes data - fonts, images, audio, strings 
>>>> - and converts them into C source so that they can be read by C 
>>>> programs without relying on external data files.
>>>> 
>>>> An obvious extension is to take in structured data. Adding SQL and 
>>>> querying a database would unfortuately mean extending the program so 
>>>> that it could only run on a large machine with a SQL server running, 
>>>> and isn't really a viable proposition. However JSON, XML, and CSV are 
>>>> commonly used to pass small to medium amounts of data about.
>>>> 
>>>> I've made a start on supporting CSV with the "<dataframe>" tag. CSV 
>>>> data is tabular and two dimensional, and lends itself to an arrray of 
>>>> simple structures. JSON And XML can of course represent more complex 
>>>> data, with hierarchy. The dataframe tag is still very experimental. 
>>>> I've never used it for anything practical.
>>>> 
>>>> So what would be the best approach to putting in JSON and XML support?
>>> 
>>> I've only briefly used XML.
>>> 
>>> The problem with XML is that the data it represents is not just 
>>> hierarchical, but it can be chaotic. You can have one lot of data, 
>>> followed by another for something else with a different structure, 
>>> followed by other. It is just a container for disparate sets of data.
>> 
>> Not just XML. JSON and may other formats have the same features.
>> 
>> In order to put a resouce to a C program my preference is to convert
>> the resource to an array of characters or bytes and process it the
>> same way it would be processed if it were read from a file.
>> 
>> 
> And of course the Baby X resource compiler already supports that. You 
> can convert XML or JSON to a string, and then run your own parser over 
> it at runtime.
> 
> But that isn't really a very good solution.

Depends on the problem. If an application needs a resource that is
not needed by many other applications an ad hoc parser can produce
a result structure that a generic parser cannot do. Even then it may
be desiderable to use a format that could be parsed as XML or JSON.

-- 
Mikko