Importing a JSON file in Meteor

Question

I have a data.json file that I would like to load and that I have placed in the lib/ folder. What should I do in order to load that JSON into a variable in the server? Thanks

Answer 1

There are three ways you can go about this, it depends what you're most comfortable with & your use case.

The first is to store it as a JS Object

if your json data is { "name":"bob" } you could use myjson = {"name":"bob"} in a .js file in the /lib folder and just call myjson when you need it.

Using an http call

You need the Meteor http package, installed via meteor add http.

Server Side code

myobject = HTTP.get(Meteor.absoluteUrl("/myfile.json")).data;

Client Side Code

HTTP.get(Meteor.absoluteUrl("/myfile.json"), function(err,result) }
    console.log(result.data);
});

Another way to do it is to fetch the json file ajax style (you would have to put it in your /public folder though and use Meteor.http to call it.

Read the file directly

Lastly you could read the file directly, you store your myfile.json in a private directory in your project's root:

var myjson = {};
myjson = JSON.parse(Assets.getText("myfile.json"));

If you want to access this on the client side you would have to interface it with a Meteor.methods and Meteor.call

So whichever way you want, the first is the easiest but I'm not too sure how you want to use it or whether you want to pick the file or something

Answer 2

As I am new to all this I suspect this is not the correct way to do this, however this has worked for me...

Three coffee script files, two in the server directory:

server.coffee:

Meteor.startup ->
    insertSample = (jsondata) ->
      Fiber(->
        Documents.insert
          name: "Sample doc"
          data: jsondata
      ).run()        
    if Documents.find().count() is 0
      insertJSONfile("tests/test.json", insertSample)

and insertJSONfile.coffee:

fs = __meteor_bootstrap__.require("fs")

insertJSONfile = (file, insert) ->
  jsondata = undefined
  fs.readFile file, (err, data) ->
    throw err  if err
    jsondata = JSON.stringify(JSON.parse(data))
    insert(jsondata)

and model.coffee in the root dir:

@Documents = new Meteor.Collection("documents")

On startup this should load and insert the JSON file (in my case I've stored this in the tests directory) into a field in the documents collection.

I would love to hear from others on how this should be done properly.

Answer 3

I assume you want the json content to be represented as an object and not as a simple string.

I use js-yaml (https://github.com/nodeca/js-yaml), assuming you install the npm package. You can also just copy it manually.

yaml = __meteor_bootstrap__.require('js-yaml')
fs = __meteor_bootstrap__.require('fs')
content = fs.readFileSync(file, 'utf8')
object = yaml.load(content)

and that's it! I personally persist my json into meteor collections.