Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: This website is valid JSON

webdatarender.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 240 posts

Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#31

Post by allenu »

gpnt wrote: post #21
amanzi wrote: post #16

This is an interesting technical hack, but I have to ask what problem this is aiming to address?

I created this tool with a very odd necessity: I hate animations and overlay ;). I would like to have access to the website data directly and build my own interface, but for this, I would have to have access to the information only. I know that the website could expose an API, but WDR feels much more natural and easy (try to do a `fetch` on the page and get the JSON instantly). Now that I have built and have played a…

I like the idea of separating the content from the presentation, although working with JSON directly to create the content, to me, is not fun.

Did you play around with just using markdown directly and embedding html tags in that in a similar way to format the page? I can't imagine myself intentionally writing web content using JSON. I'd probably have some other format up front that would be converted to JSON, but at that point I may as well just write some static page generator to create the html.

Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#32

Post by gpnt »

ajxs wrote: post #18

It's a neat trick using the Browser's Quirks Mode to load JSON that can bootstrap a framework, I'm not sure I really understand the benefit though. In order to actually get to the point of bootstrapping, the server has already transferred all of the content, plus the bootstrapping Javascript in a single payload. It seems like this implementation has the weaknesses of using a Javascript framework, without the benefits…

The idea is to separate the data in JSON completely to be consumed outside the browser if needed, but still render correctly in the browser. The traditional javascript framework only solves the latter.

I tried to solve the quirks mode, but it is kind of hilarious that the browser needs the odd to flip to standard mode. There are ways to inform the doctype on the headers or XHTML, but this would complicate a simple solution. But I was quite surprised how consistent is the look on different browsers, at least in the modern ones.

Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#33

Post by mark_and_sweep »

habitue wrote: post #10

This is a really cool hack. > The JSON must contain only pure information without any concern about design or markup. Wellll.. I mean the json has markdown syntax in it. That's a lot nicer than html tags for markup, but it's still markup. In case anyone reading hasn't seen it before, browsers have a thing called XSLT built into them that does something similar for XML documents. You serve up your data as XML, add a t…

XSLT is the only way to do HTML templating on the client without using JS. I think that is valuable.

Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#34

Post by throwaway2245 »

spondyl wrote: post #25

You know, I once had a resume powered by JSON. It was rendered to a PDF (and HTML) but the syntax was backed by JSON. This was years back and I shudder to even recall the idea. I didn't create the project mind you, it was some NPM package back when I was a fresh 'un who didn't have thoughts on using a billion subdependencies Anyway, I was nearly broke and when I went to apply for the benefit, I was asked for my resum…

This seems more about putting barriers up to make it difficult for people to collect benefits.

If you had this experience again, there would likely be some other barrier.

Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#35

Post by eyelidlessness »

gpnt wrote: post #2

Hello everyone, I created a simple script that allows a website to be a valid JSON and still be able to present the information on the browser. Any feedback is appreciated!

This is super cool and clever. I’m working on a personal site where I’ve been trying to build in some unexpected fun. If I borrow from your technique I’ll be sure to credit you!

Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#36

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

habitue wrote: post #10

This is a really cool hack. > The JSON must contain only pure information without any concern about design or markup. Wellll.. I mean the json has markdown syntax in it. That's a lot nicer than html tags for markup, but it's still markup. In case anyone reading hasn't seen it before, browsers have a thing called XSLT built into them that does something similar for XML documents. You serve up your data as XML, add a t…

I still have nightmares from learning XSLT.

It's very cool, but also, very strange, if you come from a procedural language background.

Also, XSLT is really given power by being mixed with XPath (which is procedural).

I suspect that if I had known more about FP back when I learned it, I would have had an easier time. I wrote up a really long, painful post about XSLT, way back in the early 'oughts.

Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#37

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

karlshea wrote: post #29
habitue wrote: post #10

This is a really cool hack. > The JSON must contain only pure information without any concern about design or markup. Wellll.. I mean the json has markdown syntax in it. That's a lot nicer than html tags for markup, but it's still markup. In case anyone reading hasn't seen it before, browsers have a thing called XSLT built into them that does something similar for XML documents. You serve up your data as XML, add a t…

I think Blizzard used to do this way back on their website.

There was a Web-based 3D community/game system that used browser-based XSLT. An employee of mine worked with it a lot.

I think it was called "Where," or "There," or something.

Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#38

Post by darig »

Great idea if you want to make every request for a web page result in an additional request to the JavaScript renderer, and then embed markup hacks within both the JSON and the renderer to style anything. Slower and harder to maintain! You're welcome!

Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#39

Post by gpnt »

allenu wrote: post #31
gpnt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I created this tool with a very odd necessity: I hate animations and overlay ;). I would like to have access to the website data directly and build my own interface, but for this, I would have to have access to the information only. I know that the website could expose an API, but WDR feels much more natural and easy (try to do a `fetch` on the page and get the JSON instantly). Now that I have built and have played a…

I like the idea of separating the content from the presentation, although working with JSON directly to create the content, to me, is not fun. Did you play around with just using markdown directly and embedding html tags in that in a similar way to format the page? I can't imagine myself intentionally writing web content using JSON. I'd probably have some other format up front that would be converted to JSON, but at…

I think it is early to make more conclusions, but I had to adjust my way of thinking to work with WDR. We are so accustomed to thinking data+markup that it is hard to imagine any other way. So, I started to create the JSON data without thinking about the design at all. "What information I would like to see on this page", and I created the JSON thinking only on that. It turns out, creating the render afterward was much easier and faster (and pleasant). It is, at least for me, a new way to think about the page.

Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#40

Post by crdrost »

habitue wrote: post #22
gpnt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I thought about using XML/XSLT too, but I think JSON would be more aligned with today's tools. Also, the render could be written in React or Vue, and add all the functionalities of a modern web app, for example, not just HTML.

Definitely your tooling is better incarnation of the idea, XSLT is kind of an abomination

I love XSLT in theory. It had the daring to say that the most frequently programmed thing that we do is just translate data structures of one shape into data structures of a slightly different shape, and it said “That is what I shall focus on, doing just that.” And the way that it produced that, by “just start writing your output document and insert XSLT when you finally need to loop or query the input” seemed quite nice too, a sort of PHP dialect which didn't have to “escape” out of the document type and resort to echoing raw text.

There is a pure functional programming language waiting to be resurrected from the ashes of XSLT, following Haskell's original idea that a program is a pure function from a stream of inputs to a stream of commands. I just hope that someone removes the XML from it, to save on the pain of my pinkies mashing those greater-than and less-than signs. I like the abstract idea that XML is recursively embeddable, and even the radical suggestion that maybe XSLT should be involved in metaprogramming its own syntax trees, but I am not sure that this is worth it. Maybe if we blur the lines between our code editor and a generic UI, someday?

Post reply on HN