Parsing JSON in Google Sheets

Question

I'm working with JSON for the first time, so please excuse my lack of knowledge.

I'm trying to use a JSON file to populate data in a Google Sheet. I just don't know the right syntax. How can I format a JSON function to properly access the data and stop returning an error?

I'm trying to pull data from here:

https://eddb.io/archive/v6/bodies_recently.jsonl

into a Google Sheets.

I've got the ImportJSON script loaded and I've tested it with a really small JSON file (http://date.jsontest.com/) and it works as advertised, using this function:

=ImportJSON("http://date.jsontest.com", "/date")

However, when I try to use the same function with the JSON from eddb.io above, I can't get it to work.

What I would like to do is pull the "name" into A1 and then a few of the attributes into columns, like so:

name  id  type_name  rotational_period, etc. 

Here's a link to my tests: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gCKpLcf-ytbPNcuQIIzxp1RMy7N5K8pD02hCLnL27qQ/edit?usp=sharing

Solution

How about this workaround?

Reason of issue:

When I saw the URL of https://eddb.io/archive/v6/bodies_recently.jsonl, I noticed that the extension of the file is jsonl. So when I checked the values retrieved from https://eddb.io/archive/v6/bodies_recently.jsonl, it was found that the values were JSON Lines. This has already been mentioned by Dimu Designs's comment. Also I could confirm that the official document says bodies_recently.jsonl is Line-delimited JSON.

Workaround:

Unfortunately, ImportJSON cannot directly parse the values of JSON Lines. So it is required to modify the script as a workaround. In your shared Spreadsheet, the script of ImportJSON is put as the container-bound script. In this modification, I modified the script. Please modify as follows.

From:

The following function can be seen at the line of 130 - 135 in your script editor.

function ImportJSONAdvanced(url, query, options, includeFunc, transformFunc) {
  var jsondata = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url);
  var object   = JSON.parse(jsondata.getContentText());

  return parseJSONObject_(object, query, options, includeFunc, transformFunc);
}

To:

Please replace the above function to the following script, and save the script. Then, please put =ImportJSON("https://eddb.io/archive/v6/bodies_recently.jsonl", "/id") to a cell, again.

function ImportJSONAdvanced(url, query, options, includeFunc, transformFunc) {
  var jsondata = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url);
  var object = jsondata.getContentText().match(/{[\w\s\S].+}/g).map(function(e) {return JSON.parse(e)}); // Modified

  return parseJSONObject_(object, query, options, includeFunc, transformFunc);
}

Result:

Note:

• Although this modified script works for the values from https://eddb.io/archive/v6/bodies_recently.jsonl, I'm not sure whether this modified script works for all JSON lines values. I apologize for this.

References:

• eddb.io/api
• JSON Lines

If I misunderstood your question and this was not the result you want, I apologize.

Comments

[baruchiro]

My guess is the second json contain lists, and can't converted to a sheet

[toddmo]

You're referencing github.com/bradjasper/ImportJSON/blob/master/ImportJSON.gs

[Andrew]

Thanks. The json may also be malformed. I've tried to put the file in this :jsoneditoronline.org and it returns errors.

[player0]

yeah, typo, sry... fixed

[TheAddonDepot]

The data payload is in JSON Lines format, which is distinct from pure JSON.