How to parse Javascript Object Notation in Extendscript?

[zacks]

I noticed in Dr. Brown's Image Processor the following code:

dialogResource =  "dialog { text: 'Image Processor', bounds:[100, 100, 480, 540], "

which is basically assigning object notation to the dialogResource variable.  Then later in the script you see:

mainDialog = new Window( this.dialogResource );

Which means Window() takes the object notation and creates a window object using it.  This also means the object notation is being parsed.

There's another post that allows you to use the Socket() to pull data right off a website (like a web service), so I am really interested in downloading JSON and turning it into local objects.

Any ideas on how to turn JSON into valid objects in ExtendScript?

[Michael_L_Hale · Accepted solution]

Extendscript is just Adobe's flavor of javascript so you could just eval the json string. Or you could use one of the json parsers like http://www.json.org/json2.js

[dserodio]

I've been using this parser (for generating JSON, not parsing), but Photoshop is incredibly unstable when running my scripts and I suspect json2.js is the culprit. Does anyone have experiencing with json2.js in Photoshop?

[xbytor2]

One note: ScriptUI resource strings are not quite json strings.