This repository is the companion to two articles that will soon be published on The Code Project. When they are published, the URLs will follow this paragraph.
The original objective of the article was to demonstrate the technique that I devised for efficiently transforming the JSON string returned by a REST API into something that can be fed into the Newtonsoft JSON deserializer to produce an object, and to the Visual Studio code editor to produce the strongly typed class into which to deserialize it.
Preparations for that article included cloning the GitHub repository into a new local repositiry, which exposed a nasty surprise; regardless of what I did to coerce the character-mode Git client to do otherwise, it downloaded the file that contained the JSON string, with its Unix line breaks, replacing them with Windows line breaks. Since the second phase of the conversion depended upon Unix line breaks, this broke the program.
While I know that programs exist that can replace Unix line breaks with Windows line breaks, and vice versa, I decided to create one of my own, in the spirit of my very fast AnyCSV delimited text parser.
To work around the line break conversion issue described above, and provide a ready-made set of binaries to run, the GitHub repository contains two ZIP archives that must be extracted after you clone the repository.
| Archive Name | Archive Description |
|---|---|
| Binaries.zip | This archive contains the binary (compiled, executable) files created by the build process. These comprise the /bin (output) and /obj (intermediate) output directories created by the build engine. |
| Test_Data.zip | This archive contains two versions of the file that stores the JSON string, one containing the original Unix line breaks, and the other with the Windows line breaks substituted by the Git client, along with a Microsoft Excel workbook that contains imported reports of application settings and string resources, among other things. |
Follow these step-by-step instructions to prepare the repository for use. These
instructions assume that you have the Git command line tools, and that they are
configured to work with cmd.exe.
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Open a command prompt into the directory (folder) in which you want to create your repository.
-
Enter the following command to download the repository.
`git clone https://github.com/txwizard/LineBreakFixupsDemo.git`The above command creates a new directory,
LineBreakFixupsDemo, into which it copies the contents of the repository. -
Change to the repository directory. The simplest form of the console command to do this is as follows.
`cd LineBreakFixupsDemo` -
The next step assumes that your preferred archiver is 7-zip. Unlike its commercial rival (WinZip), the command line tools come "in the box," and are automatically installed. If so, enter the following command; otherwise, skip to step 5.
`7z x Test_Data.zip`The output should look like the following.
`7-Zip 18.05 (x64) : Copyright (c) 1999-2018 Igor Pavlov : 2018-04-30` `Scanning the drive for archives:` `1 file, 34914 bytes (35 KiB)` `Extracting archive: Test_Data.zip` `--` `Path = Test_Data.zip` `Type = zip` `Physical Size = 34914` `Everything is Ok` `Folders: 1` `Files: 3` `Size: 105111` `Compressed: 34914`Skip to step 7.
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Though there are numerous hacks for unzipping with the command line without the benefit of third party tools, such as https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28043589/how-can-i-compress-zip-and-uncompress-unzip-files-and-folders-with-bat</https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28043589/how-can-i-compress-zip-and-uncompress-unzip-files-and-folders-with-bat> and many others, the quickest way to unzip a file is by way of the File Explorer. Right click the archive,
Test_Data.zip, and select "extract all files." -
Selecting the "extract all files" item, displays a dialog box that prompts for a destination folder. The default displayed therein should suffice. For example, when the repository folder is
C:\temp\LineBreakFixupsDemo, the prompt displays the following directory (folder).`C:\temp\LineBreakFixupsDemo\Test_Data`Click the Extract button to complete the task.
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Repeat steps 4 through 6 for
Binaries.zip.
The repository is ready for use, and you can see the program in action by double-clicking
[RepositoryDirectoryName]\LineBreakFixupsDemo\bin\Release\LineBreakFixupsDemo.exe, where
[RepositoryDirectoryName] is the absolute (fully qualfied) name of the directory in which
you created the repository clone.
Alternatively, you can execute the command line described above in the command prompt window that you opened to use the Git command line interface.
To see everything at once, execute the program as described above from a command prompt or the Run dialog box of the Start Menu, or double-click its icon in the File Explorer. Since it knows how to work out the location of its input files and the directory in which to create its output files, the location of the repository is irrelevant, so long as it stays intact.
LineBreakFixupDemo_Complete_Report_20190616_171328.TXT is the output of such a
complete run, saved by selecting everything in the window that opens when it
starts, and closes when you press the Return key, copying it into the
Windows clipboard, and pasting it into a new text file.
You can also execute each of its four exercises independently by appending one of the four parameters listed in the Name column of the table below.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| LineBreaks | Exercising class StringExtensions (Line ending transformation methods) |
| AppSettingsList | Exercising class Program (method ListAppSettings, which sorts and lists the application settings) |
| StringResourceList | Exercising class Program (method ListEmbeddedResources, which sorts and lists embedded string resources) |
| TransformJSONString | Exercising class JSON Fixups from files that contain transformed and raw Windows line breaks, and Unix line breaks (3 tests) |
Immediately after Test_Data.zip is extracted, the Test_Data directory contains
the files listed in the following table.
| File Name | File Description |
|---|---|
| Reference_Lists.xlsx | This Excel workbook contains two sheets, SelectedTest Enumeration and NuGet Packages and Dependencies, the names of which are self-descriptive. |
| Resources_and_Settings_Reports.xlsx | This Excel workbook contains several sheets, of which the most interesting are Application Settings Report, an import of the AppSettingsList output file, and Embedded Resources Report, an import of the StringResourceList output file. |
| strResponse_Raw_20190508_181920_Unix_LineBreaks.JSON | This text file contains the raw JSON response returned by a REST API query that is the input to the transformation tests. This is one of the two input files consumed by the TransformJSONString exercises. |
| strResponse_Raw_20190508_181920_Windows_LineBreaks.JSON | This text file contains the same JSON response, with its Unix line breaks replaced with Windows line breaks. This is one of the two input files consumed by the TransformJSONString exercises. |
At least three forthcoming CodeProject articles will refer to parts of this repository and the NuGet packages upon which it depends quite heavily. The first and third articles will refer to both Excel workbooks, while the third article will refer to Resources_and_Settings_Reports.xlsx and the two JSON files.