JSON tools

Software Engineering final team project implementing REST API and JavaFX GUI interfaces for operating strings and JSON.

Application for programmers who need to reformat or filter data structures saved in JSON format and to compare the structures with each other. JSON tools application allows you to both minify the unminified JSON representation, as well as the reverse operation (with any blanks and new lines added). The application will be available via GUI, as well as as a remote API, so it can be integrated with existing tools.

Links

• Javadoc and UML
• The latest JAR
• All releases and JARs
• Development roadmap

Architecture

The project is divided into core, api, and gui packages.

The core implements the main functionality in an interface-agnostic way, while the other packages depend on it. At the same time, formatting is built on top of a Decorator design pattern, and the Gson library is a primary way of interacting with JSON.

The api creates a vanilla HTTP server and registers the required endpoints. The request parsing and response sending functionality are extracted and reused, while the only endpoint-specific code is a resolver.

The gui contains controllers for the menu, formatting, and comparison views. The layout is defined using FXML and is responsive.

The main application class is JsonTools. It starts separate threads for API and GUI.

API

Port	8080
Request method	POST
Response codes	200, 400, 405, 500

For non-200 response codes, all the endpoints return an error message.

/api/format-json

Request format:

{
    "source",           // * A JSON object to be formatted
    "arguments": {      // * Formatting arguments
        "filter": {     //   Filtering arguments; ommited if incomplete
            "keys",     //   A string array of keys to filter; no nesting
            "exclude"   //   A flag to include/exclude the specified keys
        "prettify"      //   A flag for prettification/minification of the result
    }
}

Successfull response: the resulting JSON.

/api/compare-strings

Request format:

{
  "s1",                 // * The first string to be compared
  "s2",                 // * The second string to be compared
  "arguments": {        // * Comparison arguments
    "mode"              // * Categorical; either "different" or "identical"
  }
}

Successfull response: the line numbers as a JSON array.

GUI

Execution

Compiled
java -jar json-tools*.jar	* stands for version
Source
mvn install	install dependencies
mvn javafx:run	run from source
mvn package	create a jar at target directory
mvn verify	prepare everything for deploy
mvn clean	in case something went wrong