Handling JSON data in PhixFlow often requires adding escape characters or removing characters that PhixFlow cannot recognise.
| Tip |
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Some databases do not recognise 4-bit characters, such as emojis; see Database for recommended database configurations.
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Escaping Invalid Characters
If you are outputting stream data into JSON format, the data can include special characters that JSON will not accept. The following macro escapes these invalid characters.
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do(
$value = $args[1],
$value = replaceAll( $value , "\b","\\\\b"),
$value = replaceAll( $value , "\f","\\\\f"),
$value = replaceAll( $value , "\t","\\\\t"),
$value = replaceAll( $value , "\r","\\\\r"),
$value = replaceAll( $value , "\n","\\\\n"),
$value = replaceAll( $value , "\\\\","\\\\\\\\"),
$value = replaceAll( $value , '"','\\\\"')
)
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Validating Data Imported Into PhixFlow
JSON data, like any imported data format, can include characters that cannot be written to a database that is using the UTF-8 character set. For example, 4-bit Emojis are not supported by UTF-8.
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4-byte Characters in Different Databases
PhixFlow stores its data in a database. The recommended database configurations, described on the database pages in Infrastructure Planning and Delivery, mean your instance of PhixFlow can store UTF8 characters in its database. However, the different databases handle 4-byte characters (such as emojis) differently.
| Database | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Oracle | Stores 4-byte characters correctly. |
| SQL Server | Discards or converts 4-byte characters. |
| MariaDB | Fails to store 4-byte characters because it only recognises a sub-set of UTF8 (UTF8mb3/UTF8mb4). |
If you are loading data from another database, a file or emails, you will need to either escape or remove any invalid characters before writing to PhixFlow running on MariaDB.
For information about how to escape characters, see Text Expressions and Escape Characters.
Removing Characters
The following regex lists the characters expected in a JSON file and removes invalid characters from it. You could adapt this regex to validate the data that you want to load into PhixFlow.
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replaceAll(JSON Code,"[^\\p{Space}0-9A-Za-z!:\\\"%&\\[*()\\],-/_\\\\{}\\.]","") |
...
For information about how this line uses escape characters, see Regular Expressions.
An alternative expression for matching characters that are valid in MariaDB is:
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[^\u0000-\u0FFF] |
See Also
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