Support for json for extra data files

[arnaudsylvestre]

Hello and thanks for this plugin !

Only yaml files can be included thanks to include_yaml.
Is it possible to add include_json ?

Thanks in advance

[github-actions[bot]]

Welcome to this project and thank you!' first issue

[fralau]

You're welcome. Could you describe your use case more in detail? (i.e. why you have this constraint of json files?)

I would see two possible routes:

1. Convert your json files into yaml (depending on the circumstances, this might or might not be simple)
2. Load the json files directly from the module (in define_env()). Writing the Python code for loading the json file and updating the variables dictionary should be straightforward.

[arnaudsylvestre]

Thank you for your quick answer.

I think I will take the second route by writing a module directly in python !

[takase1121]

Hi, I hope that you can reconsider this feature.

JSON files is the lingua franca of machine-generated content.
A lot of programs support JSON input/output, including using jq to convert arbitary data into JSON.
Python itself also has support for JSON.

I know that pluglets can be used for this but I hope you would reconsider this to be added into this plugin. I also don't want to add another build step to convert JSON to YAML, because frankly, that is stupid.

[fralau]

It is true that JSON is common machine-generated content, and I am not against it.

There is, however, a design principle that the core of the plugin should remain as small as possible. Features that are a common requireemnt ("mainstream") should be included, while those who are less common should be installed as a pluglet. Unless writing a module, which is very simple and fast to develop, would be a solution?

However, before assessing whether one solution or another would be "sensible" or not, it would important to first describe in detail the problem you are trying to solve: do you wish to import a large number of external data into your pages? If yes, why? Where do they come from? What are you going to do with them? What is their native format? etc.

[takase1121]

I use include_yaml to load JSON files and it seemed fine.

I believe that it should be a feature instead of a module because:

1. supporting this will not add many lines of code. Adding it directly to the plugin will not increase the maintenance effort significantly.
2. I don't use Python regularly. Writing a module isn't a simple task for me.
3. I don't have any experience publishing packages to pypi, so I don't have the confidence to make this a pluglet either. Not only will my work only benefit me, it will benefit no one else.

I use this plugin to generate a table from JSON. The file isn't really that large and it makes 0 sense for me to generate it in any other format. Somewhere down the pipeline I can process this data with jq.

[fralau]

@takase1121 Question: do your json files always have a .json extension?