Done. See screenshots 1 and 2.

This class requires JavaDoc.

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.

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.

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.

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.