Combine JSON files?

Question

All the questions I've found relating to this have been about combining JSON objects and/or strings. I am using a jQuery plugin called "Fuse", for searching the contents of the files (repo here: https://github.com/krisk/Fuse). This is the code I have so far.

$.getJSON("data/bn1.json", function(data) {
    start(data);
});

$.getJSON("data/bn2.json", function(data2) {
    start(data2);
});

Both JSON files look like this (shortened, for brevity):

[
 {
    "number": "001",
    "name": "Cannon",
    "rarity": "*",
    "damage": "40",
    "element": "Normal",
    "description": "A nice, big Cannon!"
 },
 {
    "number": "002",
    "name": "HiCannon",
    "rarity": "**",
    "damage": "80",
    "element": "Normal",
    "description": "A nice, big Cannon!"
 },
 {
    "number": "003",
    "name": "M-Cannon",
    "rarity": "***",
    "damage": "120",
    "element": "Normal",
    "description": "A nice, big Cannon!"
 }
]

The last JSON file to be called (in this case, bn2.json) is the one that shows up when I search. I want to search in more than two files (it'll be six files in the future). The full JS file for my project is here: https://github.com/IdeasNeverCease/Gingnet/blob/master/scripts/gingnet.js (you can find my JSON files there too).

If anyone can point me in the right direction, I'd greatly appreciate it.

It doesn't appear that you want to search JSON files... it appears that you want to search objects. JSON is just a transport format. How you combine your data, we don't know. You didn't tell us what that data is. I'm not sure how we can help you. — Brad, Nov 05 '14 at 01:04
Can you get all the files as JSON strings, parse into objects, then cache locally? Your search would be against this combined local cache rather than the individual files. — kaveman, Nov 05 '14 at 01:09
@kaveman How would I do that exactly? I'm not super familiar with JSON, haha. — NetOperator Wibby, Nov 05 '14 at 01:11
see Brad's answer below - essentially what I'm talking about. — kaveman, Nov 05 '14 at 01:17

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

Your question boils down to, "how do I merge arrays?" You can use Array.concat().

var allData = [];
$.getJSON("data/bn1.json", function(data) {
    allData = allData.concat(data);
});

$.getJSON("data/bn2.json", function(data2) {
    allData = allData.concat(data);
});

Since you're getting multiple files, it would be best to use promises to wrap these all up and handle them all at once. Untested, but this should get you started:

var urls = [
  'data/bn1.json',
  'data/bn2.json',
  'data/bn3.json'
  // etc.
];

var deferreds = [];
$.each(urls, function (index, url) {
  deferreds.push($.getJSON(url)); // Request all data simultaneously
});

$.when.apply($, deferreds).then(function () { // We have all data, merge it
  var data = [];
  $.each(arguments, function (index, chunk) {
    data = data.concat(chunk);
  });
  start(data); // Do whatever you want to this new collection of data
});

Thanks a lot for your help Brad! You helped me find a solution. — NetOperator Wibby, Nov 05 '14 at 01:49

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 05 '14 at 01:50

1

Thanks to Brad, I came up with a solution:

var allData = [];

$.getJSON("data/bn1.json", function(data) {
    allData = allData.concat(data);
    start(allData);
});

$.getJSON("data/bn2.json", function(data2) {
    allData = allData.concat(data2);
    start(allData);
});

Hooray!

answered Nov 05 '14 at 01:50

NetOperator Wibby

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You're going to process your data twice? Why not use the jQuery promise library, as suggested on my answer? – Brad Nov 05 '14 at 01:51
The second example you gave didn't work with my code. What I have above is a quick fix. I intend to look into promises, they sound like a good idea. – NetOperator Wibby Nov 05 '14 at 02:48

Combine JSON files?

2 Answers2