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up vote 2 down vote favorite

I have this view that populates an unordered list from values in a JSON file, which I am doing in Node.

Is there a better way to do this, or a more 'node-like' way? Can I load the JSON file without an Ajax call?

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>4&middot;pli -- news</title>
    <link rel='stylesheet' href='/stylesheets/style.css'/>
    <script src="/javascripts/jquery-1.9.1.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script src="/javascripts/date.format.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Didact+Gothic' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
</head>
<body>
<% include shared/nav.ejs %>
<div class="wrapper">
    <ul class='news'>
       <script type="text/javascript">
           $.ajax({
               url: 'data/news.json',
               async: false,
               dataType: 'json',
               success: function (response) {
                   var items = [];
                   $.each(response.news,function(i,item){
                       items.push('<li><ul><li class="title">'+ item.title +'</li><li>' + dateFormat(item.created_at,"fullDate") + '</li><li><p>'+ item.content +'</p></li></ul></li>');
                   });
                   $('.news').append(items.join(''));
               }
           });
       </script>
    </ul>

</div>
<% include /shared/footer.ejs %>
</body>
</html>
share|improve this question
2  
async: false --- baaaad – Jan Dvorak May 16 '13 at 20:37
    
@JanDvorak elaborate futher please. – Antarr Byrd May 16 '13 at 20:38
4  
Normally javascript runs from the browser's UI thread. This means that while the browser is waiting for the AJAX response, user interaction is disabled. – Jan Dvorak May 16 '13 at 20:46
    
@JanDvorak Thanks I will try and remember that. – Antarr Byrd May 16 '13 at 20:48
up vote 4 down vote accepted

What you're looking for is JSON.parse. It's not in the Node docs, because it's "lower" than that: Every modern javascript runtime has it (see MDN).

Here's a simple function to read a file, parse it as JSON, and send it to a callback (all in Node)

function readJSONFile(filename, callback) {
  require("fs").readFile(filename, function (err, data) {
    if(err) {
      callback(err);
      return;
    }
    try {
      callback(null, JSON.parse(data));
    } catch(exception) {
      callback(exception);
    }
  });
}

In keeping with Node conventions (and just mirroring readFile itself), you pass it a callback with this signature: function(err, json). E.g.

readJSONFile("path/to/file.json", function (err, json) {
  if(err) { throw err; }
  console.log(json);
});

You can make a none-async one if you prefer, but Node's nature is async.

share|improve this answer
up vote 2 down vote

your question is not so clear.

if you use express (expressjs.com) it is pretty easy:

/**
* Module dependencies.
*/

var express = require('express')
  , http = require('http')
  , path = require('path');

var app = express();

// all environments
app.set('port', process.env.PORT || 80);
app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.use(express.methodOverride());
app.use(app.router);

var o = require('./news.json');

app.get('/news', function(req, res){
     res.json(o);
});

http.createServer(app).listen(app.get('port'), function(){
     console.log('Express server listening on port ' + app.get('port'));
});

you can create a custon route:

app.get('/news', function(req, res){
     res.json([{title: 'test', content: 'test desc'}, {title: 'test2', content: 'test2 desc'}])
}

or even from a db: (using mongoose.js)

app.get('/news', function(req, res){
     news.find().exec(function(err, result) {
         res.json(err || result);
     }); 
}
share|improve this answer

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