Reading JSON with id outside curly brackets and no quotation marks-CodePudding

I am having some troubles importing a json file to R with the following format:

C135-HR2459 {"number_a": 1, "number_b":2} 
C156-HR2249 {"number_a": 1, "number_b":2}

It would have worked if it had the following format:

{"id": C135-HR2459, "number_a": 1, "number_b":2} 
{"id": C156-HR2249, "number_a": 1, "number_b":2}

CodePudding user response：

You may want to read it in as pure text with readLines and then massage it with regex before try to read as JSON.

First remove the misplaced "{" and then add '{"id: "' to the beginning of each element:

sub("^", "{id: ", sub("\\{", "", txt))
[1] "{id: C135-HR2459\t\"number_a\": 1, \"number_b\":2}" "{id: C156-HR2249\t\"number_a\": 1, \"number_b\":2}"

The elimination of the interior "{" is done by the "inner sub. R functions need to be read and understood from the inside to the outside.

CodePudding user response：

using regex you can search for this:

C(.*?)\-HR(.*?) \{(.*?)\}

and replace it with this:

\{\"id\"\:\"C\1\-HR\2\", \3 \}

Be aware that the result will be :

{"id":"C135-HR2459", "number_a": 1, "number_b":2 } 
{"id":"C156-HR2249", "number_a": 1, "number_b":2 }

where

the value for the id MUST be between "" since is a string

also this here:

{"id": C135-HR2459, "number_a": 1, "number_b":2} 
{"id": C156-HR2249, "number_a": 1, "number_b":2}

is not a valid json, because the id value is not between quotes

CodePudding user response：

Using Notepad , you can do:

Ctrl H
Find what: ^(\S ) {
Replace with: {"id": "$1",
CHECK Wrap around
CHECK Regular expression
UNCHECK . matches newline
Replace all

Explanation:

^           # beginning of line
(\S )       # group 1, 1 or more non space character; you can use (. ?) if the string contains spaces
            # 1 space
{           # open curly brace

Replacement:

{"id": "    # literally
$1          # content of group 1
",          # literally, there is a space after the comma

Screenshot (before):

Screenshot (after):