Question

I have a working method that opens and parses a json file. Now I’m trying to iterate through a directory of json files and display their contents.

Working method for a single file:

def aperson
  File.open("people/Elvis Presley.json") do |f|
    parse = JSON.parse(f.read) 
  end
end

Non-working method to iterate through a directory:

16. def list
17.   Dir.glob('people/*').each do |f|
18.     parse = JSON.parse(f) 
19    end
20. end

My error is:

/Users/ad/.rbenv/versions/1.9.3-p194/lib/ruby/1.9.1/json/common.rb:148:in `parse': 743: unexpected token at 'people/Elvis Presley.json' (JSON::ParserError)
    from /Users/ad/.rbenv/versions/1.9.3-p194/lib/ruby/1.9.1/json/common.rb:148:in `parse'
    from app.rb:18:in `block in list'
    from app.rb:17:in `each'
    from app.rb:17:in `list'
    from app.rb:24:in `<main>'

All of the files in the directory have the same content and are valis as per JSONlint.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You tried to parse the filename as JSON, which won’t work.

Instead, you need to read the file first:

parse = JSON.parse(File.read(f))