http://www.json.org/

After discussing the pros and cons of (A) creating a Map of parameters and serialising that to a JSON string; and (B) programmatically calling methods on a ResponseWriter-esque helper object to generate the JSON string; we've chosen (B). Here is the suggestion for how to implement that idea.

Say we want to output a string that creates a javascript map, with a nested map, as well as String, integer and boolean values:

{a:

,d:25}

Re-written with more white-space, for greater clarity:

{
a:

,
d:25
}

We could make use of a utility object, that provides an API similar to StringBuilder, but javascript variable oriented, instead of char oriented:

JSONBuilder builder = new JSONBuilder();
builder.beginMap().
beginMap("a").
entry("b", true).
entry("c", "hi").
endMap().
entry("d", 25).
endMap();
String json = builder.toString();

Or, slightly more succinctly:

String json = JSONBuilder.create().
beginMap().
beginMap("a").
entry("b", true).
entry("c", "hi").
endMap().
entry("d", 25).
endMap().toString();

All the methods in JSONBuilder return the reference to itself, to simplify further operations on it. JSONBuilder.create() just makes a new instance. Every JSONBuilder internally uses a StringBuilder, whose toString() is returned by JSONBuilder.toString().

beginMap() just appends: "{"
beginMap(String key) appends: key + "

"

There would be versions of entry(String key, X value) that take: int, long, float, double, boolean, String. They basically append: key + ":" + value. The String one adds quotes and does JSON string escaping, like how the link above describes.

beginMap(String key) and entry(String key, X value) need to use some internal state for managing when to append a comma.

We should consider putting this class in glimmer, for us to use beyond sparkle, since glimmer core is hand-rolling similar code in places like org.icefaces.event.BridgeSetup.

In ICE-5830, Mircea describes a new utility class he added called ScriptWriter. In theory, we could augment that, or just use this in conjunction with that, for outputting our escaped javascript.

Usage:

import org.icefaces.component.utils.JSONBuilder;

JSONBuilder.create().
beginMap().
entry("dateStr", dateStr).
beginMap("hrMin").
entry("selectedHour", selectedHour).
entry("selectedMinute", selectedMinute).
endMap().
entry("hourField", hourField).
beginMap("amPm").
entry("amPmStr", amPmStr).
entry("amStr", amPmStrings[0]).
entry("pmStr", amPmStrings[1]).
endMap().
entry("renderAsPopup", renderAsPopup).
entry("renderInputField", renderInputField).
entry("singleSubmit", singleSubmit).
entry("ariaEnabled", ariaEnabled).
endMap().toString();

Output:

{"dateStr":"Jul\/07\/2010 01:41 PM","hrMin":

,"hourField":"HOUR1","amPm":

,"renderAsPopup":false,"renderInputField":false,"singleSubmit":false,"ariaEnabled":true}

Requirements for default values and disabled features in separate JIRA: ICE-5847.

This class requires JavaDoc.

Done. See screenshots 1 and 2.