The purpose of this assignment is to get you to use recursion, lists, and (possibly) stacks in a useful way and further improve your programming skills. As discussed in class and the first tutorial, for each problem you will be provided with a description of the problem and a set of tests. These tests can be run on the submission system (Mimir) or on the unix server for this course. You can also use these tests on your own computer as illustrated in the first tutorial. Your code must compile. If it does not compile, you will receive a 0 on the assignment.
JSON, the (JavaScript Object Notation) is a widely-used encoding format that makes is easy to exchange data. JSON is a text-based (human readable) format, which makes it ideal for many applications as well as easy to debug. A brief summary is provided here, but you are encouraged to do more in-depth research.
JSON encodes data using objects, arrays, and primitive values. A JSON object is encoded as zero or more key-value pairs, where the key is a string and a value can be an object, an array, a string, a number, true, false, or null. A string is any piece of text enclosed in double quotes, e.g., “Hello World” and a number is either an integer or a decimal value, e.g., 42 and 3.14. Objects begin with an left brace ({), contain zero or more key-value pairs, and end with a right brace (}), e.g.,
{ "subject code" : "CSCI", "course number" : 2110, "pre-reqs" : [ "CSCI 1110", "CSCI 1101" ], "exclusions" : null, "core" : true, "textbook" : { "author" : "S. Venugopal", "title" : "Data Structures Outside In with Java", "publisher" : Prentice Hall", "year" : 2007, "ISBN-10" : "0-13-198619-8" } }
In an object, key-value pairs are denoted key : value and multiple key-value pairs are sep- arated by commas (,). In JSON, an array is a sequence of values of any kind. An array begins with a left square bracket ([), has zero or more values, separated by commas, and ends with a right square bracket (]). In the example above the array contains two strings.
Determining if two JSON objects are equal is a common and useful operation. Two JSON objects are equal if they have the same set of key-value pairs (not necessarily in the same order), where for each key, the values are equal. In the case of primitive values such as strings, numbers, true, false, and null, two values are equal if they are the same. In the case of arrays, two arrays are equal if both arrays have the same number of elements and they are pairwise equal. I.e., for each array element, the values stored in both arrays are equal For example, the following two figures are examples of equal and unequal objects.
Your task is to create a program to determine if two JSON objects are equal.
Write a program called JSim.java that reads in two JSON objects from the console and determines if they are the equal. Your JSim.java program must contain the main() method where your program starts running.
Input
The input consists of two JSON objects, one after the other. The input is via the console (System.in). You may assume that there will be no error in the input.
Reading Input with JSONScanner
The provided JSONScanner class can be used to read in the JSON objects from the console. This class has a next() method, just like the standard Scanner class. But, instead of returning the next word in the input, the next() method of the JSONScanner class returns the next token in the input.
The use of JSONScanner class is similar to the Scanner class. First, instantiate an object from the class, passing in System.in. Then, repeatedly call next() on this object to get one token after the other (see example below). The hasNext() method is used to check if another token is available.
Processing
The input will contain exactly two JSON objects, one after the other.
Two objects are equal if they have the same set of key-value pairs, which may be in different orders. Two arrays are equal if they are of the same size and are pair-wise equal.
Otherwise, two values are equal if they are the same.
An object is said to be in sorted form if the key-value pairs are in sorted (alphabetical) order and all objects inside the object are also in sorted form. For example, in Figure 1, the object on the left is not in sorted form, while the object on the right is in sorted form.
Output
If the two objects are equal your program should output one of the objects in sorted form (formatted as described below), followed by
The objects are equal.If the two objects are not equal your program should output both objects in sorted form (formatted as described below), followed by
The objects are not equal.When outputting an object, the left and right braces should be on separate lines, with the key-value pairs indented two spaces. There should be single spaces between the key, the colon, and the value. If the value is an object or an array, the left brace or bracket should be on the same line. All the key-value pairs or values should be indented two more spaces. The right brace or bracket should be on separate line, with the same indentation as the key- value pair. A comma separating key-value pairs in an object or values in an array should immediately follow the key-value pair or value. Please see Figures 1 and 2 for examples.
As well as binary search (java.utils.Arrays).
objects and stores them. This can be done either iteratively with a stack or recursively. The second pass determines if the two objects are the same. This is easier to do recursively. The third pass prints out the first or both objects, and is also easier to do recursively. Note: The solution cannot be done in a single pass.
for this course on Brightspace for Code Style Guidelines.
Be sure to test your programs using the provided tests or with Mimir.
Submit the source files for your program via Mimir as described in the first tutorial. A link to Mimir is available on Brightspace. At least one of the submitted files must be JSim.java, which is where the main program starts to run. If you have more than one Java file to submit, place them all in a zip file and submit that.