See http://hackerspaces.nl/spaceapi/ for background
default.json contains the templated items - live status will added before moving to the site by some other means (python script most likely)
For scratchpad purposes, a hacky combination of PHP and Javascript (combining the worst of both) lets you do
<div id="spaceapi"></div>
<script>
<?php # spaceapi stuff
$json = file_get_contents("spaceapi.json");
echo "var spaceapi = $json;\n";
?>
document.getElementById("spaceapi").innerHTML = spaceapi.state.message ;
</script>