Idea: do things properly!

[Drugwash]

Needed a simple XML to JSON converter for an unimportant feature in the applet I'm working on. Thought it would be piece of cake. Well, nope. Wasted ten hours of this night trying to figure out why this simple regex won't work in Cinnamon while it works in the browser. Turned out the Cinnamon implementation is incomplete and faulty. Try it yourselves, see what it yields:

Code: Select all

let xml = "<ip><results><result><ip>111.222.333.444</ip><host>555.666.777.888</host><isp>Mobile Communications S.A.</isp><city>Some City</city><countrycode>WW</countrycode><countryname>Worldwebia</countryname><latitude>179.99</latitude><longitude>0.00</longitude></result></results></ip>";
global.log(fX2J(xml));

fX2J(xml) {
		const json = {};
		for (const res of xml.matchAll(/(?:<(\w*)(?:\s[^>]*)*>)((?:(?!<\1).)*)(?:<\/\1>)|<(\w*)(?:\s*)*\/>/gm)) {
			const key = res[1] || res[3];
			const value = res[2] && fX2J(res[2]);
			json[key] = ((value && Object.keys(value).length) ? value : res[2]) || null;
		}
		return json;
	}

The above comes (slightly modified) from here and it works just fine in the browser. But Cinnamon has no matchAll, neither in the String.prototype nor in RegExp[Symbol.xxxxx]. Using match won't do. How is one supposed to work when tools are broken? So here's an idea: if you're gonna implement something then do it all the way.

EDIT: nevermind, that's too new to be found in Cinnamon 4.2 anyway. Alternatives? None found so far.