Absolutely. If you're working with a setup that can use MongoDB, it's a
wonderfully flexible store.
Where I stumbled into a fascination with encoded arrays was in CGI
contexts on shared servers, where we don't usually have the luxury of an
always-on process like MongoDB.
With modestly-sized collections you can get rather nice performance from
a CGI handling encoded arrays, and you can enjoy it on any server
without the need for any installs or mods beyond the simple RevServer setup.
It's a rather specialized use-case, of course, which is why I flagged it
with "FWIW". But even if you're working on a shared host there are many
ways to skin the storage cat (pardon the gruesome metaphor).
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys
Andrew Kluthe wrote:
Working with JSON a whole lot with MongoDB over a REST Interface. Mark
Smith's (RIP) libJSON is really nice. As easy as arrayToJson(pArray)
and jsonToArray(pJSON)
On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 9:27 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
Rod McCall wrote:
I am currently developing a server application for a car simulator and
part of it may use JSON. I'd appreciate any pointers to tutorials or
even links to libraries on how to use JSON in LiveCode, therefore if
you have any tips in this direction please let me know. . Otherwise I
may have to revert to CSV or XML. From memory LiveCode did have some
nice XML features but it's a while since I tried them out.
The libJSON stack Andy suggested should work well for what you need:
<http://revonline2.runrev.com/stack/82/LibJson-1-0b>
FWIW, if by chance you're also using RevServer on the server end you may
find working with encoded arrays even more convenient, and certainly much
faster.
Compressed encoded arrays have become my favorite transport vehicle for
data, running them through base64Encode to make them extra network-safe:
put base64Encode(compress(arrayEncode(tArray))) into tOutData
On the receiving end it's probably best to handle each of the reversing
functions in a set of "try" statements to avoid execution errors in the
event that anything happened to the data in transit:
function PayloadToArray pArray
try
put base64Decode(pArray) into pArray
catch tErr
throw "Data not base64-encoded"
end try
--
try
put decompress(pArray) into pArray
catch tErr
throw "Data not compressed"
end try
--
try
put arrayDecode(pArray) into pArray
catch tErr
throw "Data not array-encoded"
end try
--
return pArray
end PayloadToArray
Looking at the BSON format used by a growing number of data stores like
MongoDB, it's a natural compliment to JSON but much more compact and with
simpler parsing. But of course if you're writing for a browser client or a
server over which you have no control over the output, converting to and
from JSON is about as good as it gets for expressing hierarchical structures
easily.
But if you're writing for a LiveCode client and use LiveCode on the server,
LiveCode's encoded arrays are quite similar to BSON in many respects, and
with the speedy convenience of arrayEncode and arrayDecode they're a joy to
work with, avoiding the overhead of the more verbose and
computationally-costly JSON.
With encoded arrays, it's almost like working with native BSON on both sides
of a client-server system.
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys
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