Structured data is common and essential in many situations. Despite prolonged attempts to structure text semantically, most that is indexed and searched has mark-up removed, and uses the lowest common denominator, plain text.
JSON
One JSON text file consistently found a search term that another contained, but could never find. How do some documents get fully indexed, but others don’t, and can’t be searched?
Widely used by apps to serialise their data into files, it’s a popular alternative to XML. You may also come across variants for streaming as JSON Lines, or worse still JSONised XML.
You can now save log extracts to JSON files, which LogUI can read in as a log extract. Also a new Reduce tool to filter unwanted log entries.
They’re XML, structured into dictionaries and arrays containing key-value pairs. Preference plists are managed, and need special treatment.
Time to take to the air with a Parrot ANAFI drone. Early experiences, sample video and images. Why use a flight simulator when you can fly (un)like a bird?
New updates to these apps fix crashing bugs when using styled log display, or converting log excerpts to CSV (Consolation).
Structuring, parsing, and styling text is not difficult when you use Swift 3 as your scripting language.
I’m sure there are more idiomatic or even efficient ways of doing it, but here is how I converted JSON data to CSV output.
Making progress with Consolation version 2: working out how to export useful data from JSON log excerpts. A punch-up in the Swift Playground.
The Eclectic Light Company 