How can I put JSON data into CoffeeScript?

Question

Specifically, if I have some json:

var myData = [ 'some info', 'some more info' ]
var myOtherData = { someInfo: 'some more info' }

What's the correct CoffeeScript syntax for that?

Solution

If you want to create an array you can use myData = ['some info', 'some more info']

If you want to create an object you can use myData = {someKey: 'some value'}

Or you can use just myData = someKey: 'some value' (i.e. you can omit the {})

For more complicated object structures you use indentation with optional {} and optional commas, for example

myData =
    a: "a string"
    b: 0
    c:
        d: [1,2,3]
        e: ["another", "array"]
    f: false

will result in the variable myData containing an object with the following JSON representation, (which also happens to be valid CoffeeScript):

{
  "a": "a string",
  "b": 0,
  "c": {
    "d": [1, 2, 3],
    "e": ["another", "array"]
  },
  "f": false
}

Comments

[Trevor Burnham]

Good overview. Just to clarify, almost all JSON or JavaScript object/array literals will work just fine when copy+pasted into CoffeeScript.