grunt-concat-json

Grunt Task for Merging Multiple JSON Files

Getting Started

This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.5

If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may install this plugin with this command:

npm install grunt-concat-json --save

Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-concat-json');

Task Properties

src

Type: String|Array

The path to the source JSON files or collection of individual files. For instance: "src/**/*.{json,js}", which will concatenate all JSON and JS files in the src folder.

dest

Type: String

The path to the output concatenated JSON file.

cwd

Type: String Default: null

The root folder to source files from. This will exclude this folder and it's parents from nested layer representation in the output JSON file. If cwd is set, then the root folder does not need to be specified as part of the src.

Task Options

options.folderArrayMarker

Type: String Default: []

The token to use as suffix to a folder name to signify the contents should be rendered as an Array of items and not a Object.

options.replacer

Type: function Default: null

The replacer argument for JSON.stringify() (second argument).

options.space

Type: String Default: ""

The space argument for JSON.stringify() (third argument).

Merge JSON Task

Run this task with the grunt concat-json command.

Task targets, files and options may be specified according to the Grunt Configuring tasks guide.

Usage Example

Assuming we have the following types of source JSON files:

src/foo/foo-en.json:

{
    "foo": {
        "title": "The Foo",
        "name":  "A wonderful component"
    }
}

src/bar/bar-en.json:

{
    "bar": {
        "title": "The Bar",
        "name":  "An even more wonderful component"
    }
}

Will generate the following destination JSON file:

{
    "foo": {
        "title": "The Foo",
        "name":  "A wonderful component"
    },
    "bar": {
        "title": "The Bar",
        "name":  "An even more wonderful component"
    }
}

Merging of Files and Folders

If a .json file and a folder share the same name, they will be merged into one object when the JSON is concatenated. Assuming we have the following source JSON files:

src/foo.json:

{
    "default": {
        "title": "The Foo",
        "name":  "A wonderful component"
    }
}

src/foo/bar.json:

{
    "title": "The Bar",
    "name":  "An even more wonderful component"
}

Will generate the following destination JSON file:

{
    "foo": {
        "default": {
            "title": "The Foo",
            "name":  "A wonderful component"
        },
        "bar": {
            "title": "The Bar",
            "name":  "An even more wonderful component"
        }
    }
}

Folder-as-Array Example

The contents of a folder can be grouped together as an array. The folder must end in a unique symbol, the default is '[]'; For the files

• src/foo[]/foo1.json:
• src/foo[]/foo2.json:
• src/foo[]/foo3.json:

{
    "foo": [
        {
            //contents of foo1.json...
        },
        {
            //contents of foo2.json...
        },
        {
            //contents of foo3.json...
        },
    ]
}

Handling JavaScript files

The javascript file can take two forms - either an object literal, or the contents of a function where your return value becomes the JSON object for the file.

{
    //if the first character is the first character of an object literal, then it is evaluated that
    //way. This means that if your JSON as JS is set up that way, you can't have whitespace or
    //a comment as the first text
    TWO_PI: Math.PI * 2,
    foo: "bar"
}

//other javacript is wrapped within a function, allowing you to create your object however you like
var rtn;
for(var i = 100; i > 50; --i)
    rtn.push(i);
//The return value here is the final result, which saves us from having to make our array
//of integer values form 100 to 51 by hand.
return rtn;

Note, that the .json files in an array folder do not retain their file names as keys, since they are now array index items.

Single file per target variant

grunt.initConfig({
    "concat-json": {
        "en": {
            src: [ "src/**/*-en.json" ],
            dest: "www/en.json"
        },
        "de": {
            src: [ "src/**/*-de.json" ],
            dest: "www/de.json"
        }
    }
});

Multiple files per target variant

grunt.initConfig({
    "concat-json": {
        "i18n": {
            files: {
                "www/en.json": [ "src/**/*-en.json" ],
                "www/de.json": [ "src/**/*-de.json" ]
            }
        }
    }
});