Allow sending other valid JSON types as IIPs

[bergie]

Currently the FBP parser only allows strings to be defined as IIPs, but other types are also necessary.

Examples:

1 -> IN SomeNode
true -> OPEN Gate
['foo', 'bar'] -> IN OtherNode

[djdeath]

Ideally we could go as far as parsing json inputs that can then be fed to the ports of the graph.

[alfa256]

When passing '\n' or other escaped characters they are treated as literals , this can be observed when using file writing components.
An "universal" data types proposal (instead of just using javascript types) could work accross platforms
Example:

'1' NUMBER -> IN SomeNode
'true' BOOL -> OPEN Gate
'["foo", "bar"]' STRING LIST -> IN OtherNode
'{"foo": 5, "baz": true }' OBJECT -> IN SomeThing

[djdeath]

All of the previous are JavaScript expressions, couldn't just inject them directly into NoFlo using an eval() or something?

[alfa256]

That can lead to abuse and bugs. But yes, JSON deserializing is what has to be done, with JSON.parse or some other safe method, eval() could mess with noflo. Although i'm not really happy in retrospective with the OBJECT type for IIPs, since it could be abused into messy graph definitions, but for testing it would be really nice.
Instead of just NUMBER, we could have FLOAT, INTEGER, DOUBLE, etc. For javascript they would all be just numbers, but for other implementations it can be different. The advantage is validating the IIP string.

[djdeath]

There are easy ways to work around not using eval().
You could have something like :

el = JSON.parse("{ value: " + stringFromFbpFile + "}");

And then pass the el.value to the processes' ports.
I just find the NUMBER, LIST, OBJECT really difficult to work with.

How do you describe complex stuff like :

[true, [0, 1, 2, 3], "Plop"]
[{x: -1, y: 1}, {x: 1, y: -1}]
etc... ?

[alfa256]

Wouldn't that be a smell? Configuring processes with contrived data structures doesn't seem smart to me at least.
It can work if you pass an object instead of a list of heterogeneous elements, otherwise it would look like noise in the FBP file, meaningless configuration string.

[tlrobinson]

Heads up I've implemented this (basically just pulled in peg.js' JSON grammar) in #58.