2.3.1.2. The JSON format

Brought in version 3.9, the format has been implemented as it is broadly used to transmit data in a very simple way. A choice has been made on the way the header are displayed: a “_metadata” field is compulsory inside which the list of flag is gathered in Table 2.3.

Table 2.3 List of keywords of header in ASCII files.

Keywords	Description
table_name	The name of the database
table_description	The title of the database
date	The date of saving (only towards writing or export)
short_names	The names of attributes
types	The natures of attributes
long_names	The titles of attributes
units	The units of attributes

The second part that provides the data itself, looks alike a key-value table and handles easily all the attribute types. Here is an example of file with the “geyser” data content, shown previously:

{
  "_metadata" : 
  {
    "_comment" : "CurrentComment",
    "date" : "Fri Oct 28 10:41:44 2016",
    "short_names" : [ "x1", "x2", "geyser__n__iter__" ],
    "table_description" : "Les donnees du geyser",
    "table_name" : "geyser",
    "types" : [ "D", "D", "D" ],
    "units" : [ "Sec", "", "" ]
  },
  "items" : 
  [
    
    {
      "geyser__n__iter__" : 1.0,
      "x1" : 3.60,
      "x2" : 79.0
    },
    
    {
      "geyser__n__iter__" : 2.0,
      "x1" : 1.80,
      "x2" : 54.0
    },

      
      
    {
      "geyser__n__iter__" : 272.0,
      "x1" : 4.4670,
      "x2" : 74.0
    }
  ]
}