asked on

Coldfusion Complex Structure Reference

Hello,
I am getting a complex JSON file and I convert it to a complex structure using deserializeJSON().

The JSON represents game results for a game site. As part of the embedded JSON the players are referred to as "1" and "-1" for the player that goes first and second respectively. The code include 3 game examples and is runnable as is.

With my reference code I can get to the data for player "1" but I throw an error for player "-1" which I commented out in the code. The error is "A CFML variable name cannot end with a "." character"

If I edit the file and change the "-1" to "2", then my reference works fine. I can do this with an editor (textpad). I just was wondering if there is a syntax I can use to leave the file as is and avoid a manual step. FYI I am using Coldfusion 8.

Thanks in advance,
hefterr

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>

<body>
<!--Test JSON parsing -->

<cfsavecontent variable="apidata">
[{
		"id" : "1caf00170c5fdc9b31435d97949e324a",
		"status" : "played",
		"created" : 1337076473000,
		"players" : {
			"1" : {
				"uid" : 52,
				"picture" : "https://www.jocly.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/pictures/picture-52-1328533101.png",
				"name" : "jcfrog",
				"country" : "FRANCE",
				"countryCode" : "FR"
			},
			"-1" : {
				"uid" : 1,
				"picture" : "https://www.jocly.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/pictures/picture-1-1320702482.png",
				"name" : "admin",
				"country" : "FRANCE",
				"countryCode" : "FR"
			}
		},
		"endReason" : "regular",
		"winner" : -1
	},
	{
		"id" : "6c959eb636a80905e0c1284a6d77e76a",
		"status" : "played",
		"created" : 1337113665000,
		"players" : {
			"1" : {
				"uid" : 858,
				"picture" : "https://www.jocly.com/sites/all/themes/joclook/images/default-avatar.png",
				"name" : "florian",
				"country" : "FRANCE",
				"countryCode" : "FR"
			},
			"-1" : {
				"uid" : 462,
				"picture" : "https://www.jocly.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/pictures/picture-462-1333741762.jpg",
				"name" : "YO",
				"country" : "FRANCE",
				"countryCode" : "FR"
			}
		},
		"endReason" : "regular",
		"winner" : 1
	},
	{
		"id" : "91671cdf9fcb55a8afa27955b6f75629",
		"status" : "played",
		"created" : 1337113882000,
		"players" : {
			"1" : {
				"uid" : 462,
				"picture" : "https://www.jocly.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/pictures/picture-462-1333741762.jpg",
				"name" : "YO",
				"country" : "FRANCE",
				"countryCode" : "FR"
			},
			"-1" : {
				"uid" : 858,
				"picture" : "https://www.jocly.com/sites/all/themes/joclook/images/default-avatar.png",
				"name" : "florian",
				"country" : "FRANCE",
				"countryCode" : "FR"
			}
		},
		"endReason" : "regular",
		"winner" : -1
	}
 ]   
</cfsavecontent>


<cfset record = deserializeJSON(apiData) />

<cfdump var="#record#">
 <cfloop from="1"  to="#arraylen(record)#" index="i">
    <cfoutput>#record[i].players.1.name# </cfoutput>
    <!--- <cfoutput>#record[i].players.-1.name# </cfoutput> --->
</cfloop>
</body>
</html>

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_agx_

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hefterr

ASKER

Hi _agx_,
I had started to realize (before reading this) that the "1" and "-1" were actually variable names and were not valid in CF. I was planing on using a REPLACE() function to change the "1" to "P1" and the "-1" to "P2". Not sure why it worked when the name was 1,2,3 etc but not negative?

But obviously, your solution is best!!!!!!

hefterr

ASKER

Thanks again for you help!!!!

_agx_

Not sure why it worked when the name was 1,2,3 etc but not negative?

Truthfully I wouldn't have expected positive numbers to work either, but I guess CF is smart enough to figure it out. The dashes are a deal breaker though. I don't think those are ever valid when using dot notation. The compiler probably interprets them as something other than a variable name. Then doesn't know what to do from there and falls over with an error.