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Show HN: This website is valid JSON

webdatarender.com

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Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#151

Post by Arnavion »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #92
greggman3 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct. It's a silly hack. Just because it happens to work doesn't make it a good idea. Turn off JavaScript and you just get JSON text.

Here's one that works without JavaScript, you curmudgeon: data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%7B%20%22foo%22%3A%20%22bar%22%2C%20%22baz%22%3A%20%5B%20%22qux%22%20%5D%2C%20%22%23render%22%3A%20%22%3Chtml%3E%3Cbody%3E%3Cdiv%20id%3Dcontent%3E%3Ch1%3EMy%20fancy%20document%3C%2Fh1%3E%3Cp%3EThis%20is%20a%20completely%20%26quot%3Bnormal%26quot%3B%20HTML%20document.%3C%2Fp%3E%3C%2Fdiv%3E%3Cstyle%3Ebody%20%7B%20visibility%3A%20hidd…

It's a valid JSON document that's basically unrelated to the HTML that ends up being displayed, so it's not exactly equivalent to the submitted link.

What the submitted link achieves is impossible without JS, which is also why it's a cute hack and should only be used in production with the knowledge that it's not going to work well for clients without JS.

Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#153

Post by ben174 »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #92
greggman3 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct. It's a silly hack. Just because it happens to work doesn't make it a good idea. Turn off JavaScript and you just get JSON text.

Here's one that works without JavaScript, you curmudgeon: data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%7B%20%22foo%22%3A%20%22bar%22%2C%20%22baz%22%3A%20%5B%20%22qux%22%20%5D%2C%20%22%23render%22%3A%20%22%3Chtml%3E%3Cbody%3E%3Cdiv%20id%3Dcontent%3E%3Ch1%3EMy%20fancy%20document%3C%2Fh1%3E%3Cp%3EThis%20is%20a%20completely%20%26quot%3Bnormal%26quot%3B%20HTML%20document.%3C%2Fp%3E%3C%2Fdiv%3E%3Cstyle%3Ebody%20%7B%20visibility%3A%20hidd…

Clever, but this is the same hack.

Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#154

Post by durnygbur »

arpa wrote: post #102
mark_and_sweep wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

XML+XSLT is vastly, vastly underrated.

Last time I was playing with these were IE6/7 times.

Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#155

Post by globular-toast »

bogidon wrote: post #44

For those like me who needed a little help... I do not fully understand the browser rendering process (someone who does please chime in), but what I gather about how this is works is: - the content-type of the page is "text/html", so the browser is trying to render html - there is no special meaning of the #render key to the browser (again the browser doesn't know this is json) - browsers are very fault tolerant so t…

In Firefox it renders in "quirks mode" because it can't find a standards compliant page. There used to be downsides to the page rendering in quirks mode instead of standards compliant mode, but I'm not sure any more.

Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#156

Post by quickthrower2 »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #92
greggman3 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct. It's a silly hack. Just because it happens to work doesn't make it a good idea. Turn off JavaScript and you just get JSON text.

Here's one that works without JavaScript, you curmudgeon: data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%7B%20%22foo%22%3A%20%22bar%22%2C%20%22baz%22%3A%20%5B%20%22qux%22%20%5D%2C%20%22%23render%22%3A%20%22%3Chtml%3E%3Cbody%3E%3Cdiv%20id%3Dcontent%3E%3Ch1%3EMy%20fancy%20document%3C%2Fh1%3E%3Cp%3EThis%20is%20a%20completely%20%26quot%3Bnormal%26quot%3B%20HTML%20document.%3C%2Fp%3E%3C%2Fdiv%3E%3Cstyle%3Ebody%20%7B%20visibility%3A%20hidd…

Check out my search engine:

data:text/html;charset=utf-8,http://google.com/" />

Re: Show HN: This website is valid JSON

#160

Post by jstrieb »

ohmaigad wrote: post #140
jstrieb wrote: post #79

Fun fact: for servers that are not too particular about the Content-Type they receive or the presence of extra object attributes, it is also possible to submit (fixed) well-formed JSON using HTML forms with no JavaScript and a dash of hackery. Submit The important bit is to include a "dummy" key at the end of the JSON object, and an input value that closes the quotes and any open curl braces. That way the "=" charact…

What exactly is the point of this when you could have pure JSON as a hidden form value without any of the "hacks" or worries about content type...

If I understand what you're asking: this trick is useful for submitting data to API endpoints that expect the entire request to be well-formed JSON, rather than just a small part. The (pretty-printed) POST body from the example form in my previous comment will look like a regular JSON request as far as the destination server is concerned, with the addition of a "dummy" key:

  {
    "key1": "val1",
    "params": {
      "input": "value",
      "list": []
    },
    "dummy": "="
  }
If the JSON is just a hidden form value as you suggest, the request as a whole will not be treated as JSON data. Then invalid characters will (usually) be added to the request body by the browser, and the server will (probably) be unable to parse it, causing the request to fail. This is due to how forms are encoded for POST requests.

On the other hand, if you're wondering why anyone would ever do this, then I do not have a good answer for you :)

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