How to convert a .jl file to a .json file in Javascript (Node.js)

Question

I have this data in a .jl file which I would like to convert into a JSON array:

I am supposed to receive data from a server, which sends it in a .jl format. However, I have written my program in Node.js and the only way I know to use the data is in JSON format from a .json file. I have shared the .jl file code I have and the .json format I would like to convert it into below. (At the moment I have manually retyped the data in the .jl file to .json format). Does anyone know how to convert the data from the .jl file into data in a JSON array as shown on my code below?

// .jl data:
{
    "FName": "Peter", 
    "ONames": ["Mc", "West"], 
    "Hobbies": ["Football", "Basketball"], 
    "Age": 18
},
{
    "FName": "Edward", 
    "ONames": ["Mc", "Fly"], 
    "Hobbies": ["Tennis", "PlayStation"], 
    "Age": 19
},
{
    "FName": "Winnie", 
    "ONames": ["Honey", "Pooh"], 
    "Hobbies": ["Boxing", "Basketball"], 
    "Age": 28
}

What I'm hoping to achieve is the following:

// Expected JSON array format:
[
    {
        "FName": "Peter", 
        "ONames": ["Mc", "West"], 
        "Hobbies": ["Football", "Basketball"], 
        "Age": "18"
    },
    {
        "FName": "Edward", 
        "ONames": ["Mc", "Fly"], 
        "Hobbies": ["Tennis", "PlayStation"], 
        "Age": "19"
    },
    {
        "FName": "Winnie", 
        "ONames": ["Honey", "Pooh"], 
        "Hobbies": ["Boxing", "Basketball"], 
        "Age": "28"
    }
]

Answer 1

I think what you're asking is how to read content from .jl file?

Since .jl is a text document in utf8 encoding & you only need to wrap the content inside bracket, you can use fs.readFile with encoding set to 'utf8', wrap it in brackets then write that string into a .json file. Here's an example with fs.readFileSync() :

const fs = require('fs');

const content = fs.readFileSync('./test.jl', 'utf8');

fs.writeFile('./test.json', `[${content}]`, (err) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log('saved as json')
})

I don't know .jl at all, so I'm not sure what you'd need to watch out for syntax-wise. For your use case though this should work.

Edit: If you just want to consume the file immediately, instead of writing it out to a .json , you could do:

const fs = require('fs');

const content = fs.readFileSync('./test.jl', 'utf8');

const data = JSON.parse(`[${content}]`);

If your .jl is really really massive, look into using stream.

---

fs.readFile

fs.readFileSync

fs.writeFile

fs.writeFileSync