JSON Structure.md

JSON structure

Why JSON?

JSON works great as a common transport language, it is platform agnostic and it is something that developers are already using regularly when building application that fetch data from an external resource. Spots uses JSON internally to save a snapshot of the view state to disk, the only thing that you have to do is to give the SpotsController a cache key and call save whenever you have performed your update.

So what if I don't have a backend that supports Spots view models? Not to worry, you can set up Spots programmatically and still use all the other advantages of the framework.

An example JSON

{
   "components":[
      {
         "header":{
          "title":"Hyper iOS",
          "kind":"HeaderView"
         },
         "kind":"list",
         "layout":{
           "span":"1"
         },
         "items":[
            {
               "title":"John Hyperseed",
               "subtitle":"Build server",
               "image":"{image url}",
               "type":"profile",
               "action":"profile:1",
               "meta":{
                  "nationality":"Apple"
               }
            },
            {
               "title":"Vadym Markov",
               "subtitle":"iOS Developer",
               "image":"{image url}",
               "type":"profile",
               "action":"profile:2",
               "meta":{
                  "nationality":"Ukrainian"
               }
            },
            {
               "title":"John Sundell",
               "subtitle":"iOS Developer",
               "image":"{image url}",
               "type":"profile",
               "action":"profile:3",
               "meta":{
                  "nationality":"Swedish"
               }
            },
            {
               "title":"Khoa Pham",
               "subtitle":"iOS Developer",
               "image":"{image url}",
               "type":"profile",
               "action":"profile:4",
               "meta":{
                  "nationality":"Vietnamese"
               }
            },
            {
               "title":"Christoffer Winterkvist",
               "subtitle":"iOS Developer",
               "image":"{image url}",
               "type":"profile",
               "action":"profile:5",
               "meta":{
                  "nationality":"Swedish"
               }
            }
         ]
      }
   ]
}

View models in the Cloud

let controller = SpotsController(json)
navigationController?.pushViewController(controller, animated: true)

The JSON data will be parsed into view model data and your view controller is ready to be presented, it is just that easy.

Programmatic approach

let contactModel = ComponentModel(
  header: Item(title: "Contacts"), 
  items: [
    Item(title: "John Hyperseed"),
    Item(title: "Vadym Markov"),
    Item(title: "John Sundell"),
    Item(title: "Khoa Pham"),
    Item(title: "Christoffer Winterkvist")
  ]
)
let component = Component(model: contactModel)
let controller = SpotsController(components: [component])

navigationController?.pushViewController(controller, animated: true)