Hi Paul,

Thank you very much for the link to your blog about the json file type. It is (as always) very helpful.

I tried to use the file type from the AppStore but I received the following error message:

(Pre-Scanning failed to identify the file type, the following messages were generated:

Pre-Scanning Error: Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: v. Path", line 0, position 0.)

Then I created my own json file type according to the instructions in your blog. That worked fine but the file contains other languages and all kinds of other stuff that the translator does not need.

I am afraid the Studio screenshot is rather small. But it contains 4 languages and we only need to use the Dutch language as the source language. Unfortunately, I am not good with regular expressions and even though I tried to follow the instructions of your blog I did not get very far.

I could really use some help tweaking the json file type I created myself or finding a way to use the JSON file type from the AppStore.

Thank you in advance for your reply.

Anthoinette

Paul Filkin said:

Just to close that off... the problem was with the JSON file as it was incorrectly formed. Seemed to contain some leftover javascript on the first line of the file.

In that case it maybe wasn't supposed to be a JSON file, but a JavaScript snippet containing an object variable definition (especially if it had a ".js" extension, not ".json").

Many people confuse those two because the format looks very similar to JSON (of course, because JSON means "JavaScript Object Notation") and they don't have enough technical experience to see the difference.

For example the following screenshot shows a JavaScript code snippet containing a call of "SC.stringsFor" function with two parameters: a language code and a JavaScript object consisting of a dictionary containing a few hundreds of key-value pairs.
Although the file looks very similar to JSON, it is not JSON.

Paul Filkin said:

Just to close that off... the problem was with the JSON file as it was incorrectly formed. Seemed to contain some leftover javascript on the first line of the file.

In that case it maybe wasn't supposed to be a JSON file, but a JavaScript snippet containing an object variable definition (especially if it had a ".js" extension, not ".json").

Many people confuse those two because the format looks very similar to JSON (of course, because JSON means "JavaScript Object Notation") and they don't have enough technical experience to see the difference.

For example the following screenshot shows a JavaScript code snippet containing a call of "SC.stringsFor" function with two parameters: a language code and a JavaScript object consisting of a dictionary containing a few hundreds of key-value pairs.
Although the file looks very similar to JSON, it is not JSON.

Evzen Polenka said:

In that case it maybe wasn't supposed to be a JSON file, but a JavaScript snippet containing an object variable definition (especially if it had a ".js" extension, not ".json").

Nope, it was definitely JSON.  Just had this one line at the start that was incorrect:

var translate = {

All the rest of the file was JSON to the letter!

Paul Filkin said:

Nope, it was definitely JSON.  Just had this one line at the start that was incorrect:

var translate = {

Paul, but that's EXACTLY what I was talking about! That "extra" part is actually a JavaScript object variable definition.

Paul Filkin said:

All the rest of the file was JSON to the letter!

Of course it looks like JSON, because JSON syntax is simply taken from JavaScript object literal syntax!

Paul Filkin said:

1. closing syntax that was missing
2. file extension that was not JSON

What "closing syntax" are you refering to exactly? A JavaScript object literal definition must be enclosed in curly braces just like a valid JSON. If the closing curly brace was there, it was all perfectly okay. If it wasn't there, it was invalid syntax for both formats.

Paul Filkin said:

The file looks to me as though it's been output for translation with a small error in how the files have been prepared.

That's exactly what I was pointing out - that people (usually due to lack of knowledge) confuse these two and create crippled files (e.g. JavaScript snippets with .json extension, etc.)... which are then further mistakenly understood by the poor recipients, who keep fixing the consequences instead of directing the sender to fix the CAUSE in the first place.