property_to_json Function

Syntax

dim json as C = property_to_json(p prop [, l changesOnly] )

Arguments

propPointer: An object that contains the properties to convert to JSON.
changesOnlyLogical

Returns

jsonCharacter: Returns the dot variable as a JSON object.

Description

Takes a property, like a dot variable, and converts it to a JSON object.

Discussion

The property_to_json() function shares similarities with the json_generate() function. However, it uses a different mechanism and doesn't do nearly as much as json_generate.

dim prop as p
prop.name_first = "John"
prop.name_last = "Smith"
prop.occupation = "Cobbler"

? property_to_json(prop)
= {"name":"John","name_first":"John","name_last":"Smith","occupation":"Cobbler"}

Json_generate() is designed so that you can do a full "round trip" (i.e. json_generate(), followed by json_parse() of the string produced by json_generate()) without losing any information.

This is not the case with property_to_json().

For example:

dim p as p
p.name = "Fred"
p.city = "Boston"
p.date = date()
?json_reformat(property_to_json(p))
= {
    "name": "Fred",
    "city": "Boston",
    "date": "2019-04-11"
}

The above string is a valid JSON string, but notice that we have lost information about the original type of type of the "date" property.