Invalid projects.json causes issues

[Gama11]

Using the latest version (0.13.0) + VSCode 1.8.1.

If the projects.json file is completely empty, the following error appears:

This is not particularly surprising.

However, clicking "Open File" here doesn't do anything. It even looks like the extension crashes entirely (?), since no project manager command works anymore:

This means you have to manually locate the projects.json file to correct the issue (not a big issue in my case since I knew where it was, but this could be considered bad UX).

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Note: if projects.json contains {} instead of being completely empty, it fails slightly differently:

So that might be a different issue.

[equinusocio]

@Gama11 I have the same issue, where is the projects.json file?!

[Gama11]

(on windows)

%AppData%/Code/User/projects.json

[equinusocio]

Thank you, on macOS is at:
/Users/[USER]/Library/Application Support/Code/User/projects.json

[alefragnani]

@Gama11 thanks for the detailed description 👍.

I think I have to revisit this code. It's probably related to the refactoring that was made to support VSCode, Git and SVN auto-detection.

But, I don't see why projects.json file should be empty, unless you removed the projects from there and started to use VSCode, Git or SVN support, am I right? Or it was cleared with the extension update?

In the meantime, try to add a temporary project in projects.json, until I'm able to release a fix.

Thanks for your help

[Gama11]

But, I don't see why projects.json file should be empty, unless you removed the projects from there and started to use VSCode, Git or SVN support, am I right?

Yes, I manually emptied the file to check out the project auto-detection feature.

In the meantime, try to add a temporary project in projects.json, until I'm able to release a fix.

Like I mentioned, that's what I did. I just thought I should report this anyway so the UX can be improved. :)

[alefragnani]

Better UX is aways a good point, but in this case, is really a bug 😄

[ghost]

I submitted PR #81, which probably fixes this issue.

@alefragnani Can you please have a look and confirm if that's the case?

[alefragnani]

Hi @samuelsuarez ,

First of all, thanks for you PR. I didn't evaluate yet because I'm on vacation, and decided give a break on some coding 😄 . I must return to play next week.

About the fix, I guess aren't related. The problem here appears to be not handling malformed json files, instead of empty project list. I didn't check/debug the issue yet to be sure, but if your PR fixes, I will be _veeery happy 😁

[alefragnani]

Well, I can't simply read/write e-mails, developers loves to code 😄

I debugged this issue and discovered some things:

• An empty file is not supported, but instead of leaving it empty, it should be deleted. That would be the case if you don't want any Saved Project, but only VSCode, Git or SVN. But, the Open File button should work, so I will fix that 😄
• An empty list is supported, but is not working, and @samuelsuarez PR fixes that 🎉
• An invalid json file is supported, but is not working, so I will fix that.

It will be fixed soon, but first I have to merge 2 PRs and merge another internal code that I'm doing. After that I have to check #84

Thanks for your help

[alefragnani]

@samuelsuarez ,

Looks like you were right, your PR fixes the empty list problem 👍 🎉.

Thank you!