Question

I am having difficultly with syntax and structure of JSON objects/arrays.

{ 
  "accounting" : [   
                     { "firstName" : "John",  
                       "lastName"  : "Doe",
                       "age"       : 23 },

                     { "firstName" : "Mary",  
                       "lastName"  : "Smith",
                        "age"      : 32 }
                 ],                            
  "sales"      : [ 
                     { "firstName" : "Sally", 
                       "lastName"  : "Green",
                        "age"      : 27 },

                     { "firstName" : "Jim",   
                       "lastName"  : "Galley",
                       "age"       : 41 }
                 ] 
} 

I want to make a nested structure of objects and arrays that would house the following info:

{
"problems": [{
    "Diabetes":[{
        "medications":[{
            "medicationsClasses":[{
                "className":[{
                    "associatedDrug":[{
                        "name":"asprin",
                        "dose":"",
                        "strength":"500 mg"
                    }],
                    "associatedDrug#2":[{
                        "name":"somethingElse",
                        "dose":"",
                        "strength":"500 mg"
                    }]
                }],
                "className2":[{
                    "associatedDrug":[{
                        "name":"asprin",
                        "dose":"",
                        "strength":"500 mg"
                    }],
                    "associatedDrug#2":[{
                        "name":"somethingElse",
                        "dose":"",
                        "strength":"500 mg"
                    }]
                }]
            }]
        }],
        "labs":[{
            "missing_field": "missing_value"
        }]
    }],
    "Asthma":[{}]
}]}

But I have no idea what the right way to do this should be. Should I just be making JavaScript objects? Does JSON make sense for this project?

What is the correct syntax to set something like this up?

Here is my code so far:

$(document).ready(function() {
    $.getJSON('js/orders.json', function(json) {
      $.each(json.problems, function(index, order) {
        $('.loadMeds').append('<p>' + order.name + '</p>')
      });
    });
});

Answer 1

The first code is an example of Javascript code, which is similar, however not JSON. JSON would not have 1) comments and 2) the var keyword

You don’t have any comments in your JSON, but you should remove the var and start like this:

orders: {

The [{}] notation means “object in an array” and is not what you need everywhere. It is not an error, but it’s too complicated for some purposes. AssociatedDrug should work well as an object:

"associatedDrug": {
                "name":"asprin",
                "dose":"",
                "strength":"500 mg"
          }

Also, the empty object labs should be filled with something.

Other than that, your code is okay. You can either paste it into javascript, or use the JSON.parse() method, or any other parsing method (please don’t use eval)

Update 2 answered:

obj.problems[0].Diabetes[0].medications[0].medicationsClasses[0].className[0].associatedDrug[0].name

returns ‘aspirin’. It is however better suited for foreaches everywhere