The Unofficial Poster Child for Notes and Domino

    I Feel Pretty - Native Lotusscript Pretty Print for NotesJSONNavigator

    Robert Baehr  April 15 2025 03:17:23 AM
    Greetings:

    Having been working with the Lotusscript JSON classes and dealing with the raw output of the .stringify function, I decided to write a native "pretty print" function in Lotusscript.   As an example, I generated two Lotusscript NotesJSONNavigators, as shown below.  Note: This is not the best "code", but merely an example.

         Set jNav = s.CreateJSONNavigator("")
         Set jEL = jNav.AppendElement("Vehicle Maintenance","Name")
         Set jObj = jNav.AppendObject("Vehicle")
         Set jEl = jObj.AppendElement("Ford","Make")
         Set jEl = JObj.AppendElement("F150","Model")
         Set jEl = jObj.AppendElement("2014","Year")
         Set jArr = jNav.AppendArray("Oil Changes")
         Set jEl = jArr.AppendElement("01-02-2025")
         Set jEl  = jArr.AppendElement("03-01-2025T")
         
         Res = jnav.Stringify 'Res will contain the JSON results in raw, stringified format.
         
         Set jNav = s.CreateJSONNavigator("")
         Set jEL = jNav.AppendElement("Vehicle Maintenance","Name")
         Set jObj = jNav.AppendObject("Vehicle")
         Set jEl = jObj.AppendElement("Hyundai","Make")
         Set jEl = JObj.AppendElement("Elantra","Model")
         Set jEl = jObj.AppendElement("2010","Year")
         Set jArr = jNav.AppendArray("Oil Changes")
         Set jEl = jArr.AppendElement("01-12-2025")
         Set jEl  = jArr.AppendElement("03-23-2025T")
         
         Res = Res & Chr(13) & Chr(10) & JNav.Stringify 'res now contains the new JSON results, appended with the carriage return/line feed, and the new JSON result in stringified format.

    Printing Res will give the following, raw output.

    {"Name":"Vehicle Maintenance","Vehicle":{"Make":"Ford","Model":"F150","Year":"2014"},"Oil Changes":["01-02-2025","03-01-2025T"]}
    {"Name":"Vehicle Maintenance","Vehicle":{"Make":"Hyundai","Model":"Elantra","Year":"2010"},"Oil Changes":["01-12-2025","03-23-2025T"]}

    While accurate, this format can leave a lot to desire visually (especially with large data sets).   I devised a function called BWSJSONPrettyPrint that will "pretty print" (format) the resulting NotesJSONNavigator.stringify.  BWSJSONPrettyPrint takes two parameters:

    Parameter 1:  The stringified version of the JSON results, and
    Parameter 2:  The number of spaces that you want to indent the results by

    For the example above, if I call BWSJSONPrettyPrint(Res,5), we get the following output (indented by 5 spaces)

    {
     "Name": "Vehicle Maintenance",
     "Vehicle": {
          "Make": "Ford",
          "Model": "F150",
          "Year": "2014"
     },
     "Oil Changes": [
          "01-02-2025",
          "03-01-2025T"
     ]
    }
    {
     "Name": "Vehicle Maintenance",
     "Vehicle": {
          "Make": "Hyundai",
          "Model": "Elantra",
          "Year": "2010"
     },
     "Oil Changes": [
          "01-12-2025",
          "03-23-2025T"
     ]
    }

    This produces a much easier to read JSON data structure, without the need to copy/paste into a formatter.  As as added bonus, if you save the output to a file, you get the same "pretty" result.

    Thought I'd share why I still believe that you can do darned near anything with Domino.....



    Cheers!

    Bob Baehr
    The Unofficial Poster Child for Notes and Domino