Node.js JSON handling

In this example, we will load a JSON dataset and perform some standard manipulations on the data. I am referencing the list of FORD Models from http://www.carqueryapi.com/api/0.3/?callback=?&cmd=getModels&make=ford. I can't reference this directly, as it is not a flat file, but an API call. Therefore, I downloaded the data into a local file called fords.json. Also, the output from the API call wraps the JSON like so: ?(json);. This would have to be removed before parsing.

The scripting we will use is as follows. In the script, JSON is a built-in package of Node.js, so we can reference this package directly. The JSON package provides many of the standard tools that you need to handle your JSON files and objects.

Of interest here is the JSON file reader, which constructs a standard JavaScript array of objects. Attributes of each object can be referenced by name, for example, model.model_name:

//load the JSON dataset 
//http://www.carqueryapi.com/api/0.3/?callback...