Support JSON based NBT files

IzzelAliz / nbt

Java NBT(Named Binary Tag) library.

https://nbt.izzel.io

MIT License

24 stars 0 forks source link

Support JSON based NBT files #1

Open dzikoysk opened 3 years ago

dzikoysk commented 3 years ago

Hey,

It might be a good idea to support JSON format that stores NBT data. There is a couple of available libraries (like minecraft-data) and it could be quite helpful. It is also supported by all of the IDEs and editors, so it also improves the experience during the process of development such a data.

Here is an example file that represents NBT in JSON: https://github.com/PrismarineJS/minecraft-data/blob/master/data/pc/1.16.2/loginPacket.json (the dimension-codec section, it's mixed file`)

Thanks :)

ustc-zzzz commented 3 years ago

Several details to be confirmed:

I haven't found things about number arrays, what're their names? byte_array or bytearray?
What will happen if type field does not exist? Guess the type from value field or just throw an error?
What will happen if an unmatched value is read (for example, got a number but required a string, or got a floating number but required an integer)? Convert to required type automatically or just throw an error?

dzikoysk commented 3 years ago

Thanks for quick response :)

I've never seen usage of number arrays in such a format, so I suppose it's up to you. For instance minecraft-data uses byte_array to describe the protocol, so it might be a fair candidate.
I think it should throw an error in both scenarios, because it is just cleaner and it requires less effort to implement it. In the future it could be extended by some kind of flexible matcher that may perform conversion, but I don't really see the case for this now 🤔

ustc-zzzz commented 3 years ago

Considering that it's not an official standard and it will depend on at least one JSON library, a new repo (depending on this) will be created for this feature. Please wait for our follow-up actions.

dzikoysk commented 3 years ago

I've created a simple mapper from JSON to NBT, so it's not a problem for me. I reported it to just let you know that some people may also find it useful in the future.

Instead of a new repo, you could also consider modularization of this one like this:

nbt-parent/ - parent settings for both modules
  nbt/      - core NBT module
  nbt-json/ - JSON support for NBT module

In most cases it's the best solution for such a projects.