Can anyone tell me what format this uh.. nested dictionary is?

Submitted ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨luthis@lemmy.nz⁩ to ⁨linux@programming.dev⁩

I have a file with content like this:

item({
     ["attr"] = {
        ["size"] = "62091";
        ["filename"] = "qBuUP9-OTfuzibt6PQX4-g.jpg";
        ["stamp"] = "2023-12-05T19:31:37Z";
        ["xmlns"] = "urn:xmpp:http:upload:0";
        ["content-type"] = "image/jpeg";
     };
     ["key"] = "Wa4AJWFldqRZjBozponbSLRZ";
     ["with"] = "email@address";
     ["when"] = 1701804697;
     ["name"] = "request";
});

I need to know what format this is, and if there exists a tool in linux already to parse this or if I need to write one myself?

Thanks!

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Comments

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theit8514@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This looks like a combination of JSONP and the ES2015 computed property name syntax. JSONP is used to load into web pages using a script tag and execute the function (item) with the data, rather than a direct response from Ajax.

As for tools, jq may be able to parse this assuming you remove the item( and the last );

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- nybble41@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s similar, but JavaScript would use : and , for separators rather than = and ;. I don’t know of any exact matches and I considered quite a few languages, both common and uncommon.
  
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  - sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Possibly lua? I think it supports brackets and semi-colon from a quick google search, but I could be wrong. Not able to test this moment.
    
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Knusper@feddit.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It looks similar in structure to JSON:

{ "attr": { "size": "62091", "filename": "qBuUP9-OTfuzibt6PQX4-g.jpg", ... }; "key": "Wa4AJWFldqRZjBozponbSLRZ", ... }

So, it might be some JSON meta language. I just find it weird that it seems to contain all data, so you wouldn’t use this for validating or templating JSON.

But ultimately, it also means with a handful of regex replacements, you could turn this particular file into JSON. Might make building your own parser almost trivial…
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- luthis@lemmy.nz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah, its real close to JSON but not.
  
  I’m going to have to go a step deeper and find out what’s going on in the code because this section is repeated many many times. It’s not just this one that I need to parse.
  
  … It might even be easier to write my own parser like you said, because I need to take actions based on the date fields.
  
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