Structure of ASSOC string

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone had some information about the structure of ASSOC as it is represented in string format. If anyone has come up with a parsing routine (c++/c#) then I would be happy for any info regarding how to parse this string.

If that doesnt work, is it possible to feed an object of type LLAssoc with an assoc string as initializer in the contsructor? I havent found one...

Regards,

Rune

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Greg_Griffiths

Rune,

here is an execpt from some code I wrote in Classic ASP for http://www.greggriffiths.org/livelink :

        ' remove the tail of the datastream
        theDiff=(InStrRev(theString,">>}>"))
        theString=left(theString,theDiff-1)

        ' remove the head of the datastream
        theDiff=InStr(theString,"A<1,?,2")
        theString=right(theString,(len(theString)-theDiff))

        While (len(theString)>0)

            ' find the I in the ID, then add 3 chars to get us to the value
            SearchChar="'ID'="
            theDiff = Instr(theString, SearchChar)+2

            ' Grab the string from that point on till the end of the string
            theString1=right(theString,(len(theString)-theDiff))

            ' edge along the string to get hold of the ID value
            SearchChar=","
            theDiff = Instr(theString1, SearchChar)

            ' strip out the ID component
            fieldID=left(theString1,(theDiff-1))
            fieldID=right(fieldID,(len(fieldID)-2))

            ' find the start of the value component
            theString1=right(theString1,(len(theString1)-InStr(theString1,"{")+1))

            ' find the end of the value component
            SearchChar="}"
            theDiff = Instr(theString1, SearchChar)-1

            ' get the value component
            fieldValue=left(theString1,theDiff)
            fieldValue=right(fieldValue,(len(fieldValue)-1))

            ' if the fieldValue is greater than one, thus removing an issue with the question mark character.
            if (len(fieldValue)>1) then
                ' grow the array
                ReDim Preserve dataStore(2,count)

                ' store it
                dataStore(1,count)=fieldID
                dataStore(2,count)=fieldValue

                ' increment the counter
                count=count+1
            end if

            ' chop off what we have just checked and put what is left back into THESTRING
            theDiff=(Instr(theString,fieldValue) + len(fieldValue))
            theString=right(theString,len(theString)-theDiff)
        Wend

sıɹɥɔ

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">

Hi Rune,

I've written a Javascript function to parse Assoc representations. (It was to support OSON - OScript Object Notation... a brother to JSON.)

There are two challenges involved:

1. Since Assoc is a "container type" you need to be able to recognize other OScipt types: Integer, Real, Boolean, List, RecArray, Record, String, Undefined, etc. (OScript has other types than just these, so you'll need to decide which subset of OScript types you are planning to accept in an Assoc.

2. Assoc's can be recursive.

The encoding method of OScript types, such as Assoc's, is not documented, so the best way to determine how each type is encoded is to call OScript's String.ValueToString() on sample values and see what you get. The first character of each encoding actually determines the type, so it's not that difficult to parse.

Good luck!

-chris

From: eLink Entry: Content Server Development Forum [mailto:development@elinkkc.opentext.com]
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2010 7:25 AM
To: eLink Recipient
Subject: Structure of ASSOC string

Structure of ASSOC string

Posted by runek@multiconsult.no (Kristiansen, Rune) On 2010/08/16 08:20

Hello, I was wondering if anyone had some information about the structure of ASSOC as it is represented in string format. If anyone has come up with a parsing routine (c++/c#) then I would be happy for any info regarding how to parse this string. If that doesnt work, is it possible to feed an object of type LLAssoc with an assoc string as initializer in the contsructor? I havent found one... Regards, Rune

Carsten_Kulms

First I would ask if there is really need dealing with `stringified? OScript types.Basically this serialization format is fully internal and subject to change without notice at any time.Any solution based on the -- intentionally not documented -- details of this format is likely to fail after e.g. upgrades.OScript only implementations should never encounter a situation where it is necessary to deal seialized OScript objects at this level.Remote solutions (LAPI etc) should also not care about this in anycase. In case your approach includes LAPI you should consider to switch over to the new (Web) Services API.See also (last post).