Add JSON output protocal

[ChuckJonas]

Wondering what the thought is behind all the non-json elements in the response files?

RESULT=FAILURE
#SECTION START: ERROR LIST
ERROR: {"filePath":"/Users/jonas/Documents/code/apex-autocomplete/bin/tmp2.cls","line":48,"column":8,"text":"mismatched input '}' expecting {'instanceof', '(', '[', ';', '.', '=', '>', '<', '?', '==', '<=', '>=', '!=', '&&', '||', '++', '--', '+', '-', '*', '/', '&', '|', '^', '%', '+=', '-=', '*=', '/=', '&=', '|=', '^=', '%=', '<<=', '>>=', '>>>='}"}
#SECTION END: ERROR LIST

It's somewhat of a pain as I have to preprocess the file to remove these lines before passing it through JSON.parse

Seems like a completely JSON structure would be more machine readable. You could include these elements in the structure if they are needed.

{
   success:false,
   errorList:[
     {"filePath":"/src/classes/tmp.cls","line":48,"column":8,"text":"mismatched input '}' expecting {'instanceof', '(', '[', ';', '.', '=', '>', '<', '?', '==', '<=', '>=', '!=', '&&', '||', '++', '--', '+', '-', '*', '/', '&', '|', '^', '%', '+=', '-=', '*=', '/=', '&=', '|=', '^=', '%=', '<<=', '>>=', '>>>='}"}
  ]
}

[neowit]

There is actually no JSON in the response.
It just so happens that vim dictionary (when serialised) looks like JSON.

These line prefixes like Error: are used (in shell scripts or vim) to grep response file, quickly get relevant lines, and (in vim case) pass it to eval() which converts them to vim dictionary.

Response file format was originally created with vim and shell scripts as its primary clients in mind. Also, at that time vim did not support real JSON parsing (since version 8 it does).

Shell client (e.g. used by CI) usually does not care what exact errors occurred and just needs to “know” if there are any. Here lines prefixed with Error: also come handy.

It is technically not a big deal to add a new output format. It would require new "protocol" implementation (here is vim example) and adding a flag to "--action" instructing it which format to use.

[ChuckJonas]

nice, I've been wanting to get involved in this project (although I've never written scala), maybe this would be a good place to start when I have some free time.

Also, it must be outputting valid JSON as I haven't had any problems parsing it.

[neowit]

A good start would be to define what the protocol is going to look like first, and think if it will use response file approach or some other way (e.g. stdout or TCP Socket). I do not recommend stdout though because if you want proper JSON then log output will mess it up.

What are you planning to use it with (as a client) ? In another ticket you mentioned Sublime, is this your client in mind ?

[ChuckJonas]

I've actually already published an extension for vscode that is pretty much just a proxy for this library (but only around language features).

It's starting to pick up traction, especially since I added support for the findSymbol & checkSyntax actions.

The output is fine for now, I just thought this might be a good place to get my feet wet and contribute to your project (because it has no doubt some of the best language features of anything out there).