Save struct field names with hyphens/dash in JSON?

It is quite common to use hyphens/dashes (-) in the field names of JSON, like this:

{
  "file-series-version" : "1.0",
  "files" : [
    { "name" : "foo1.vtk", "time" : 0 },
    { "name" : "foo2.vtk", "time" : 5.5 },
    { "name" : "foo3.vtk", "time" : 11.2 }
  ]
}

However, I haven't found a way to get a hyphen character into the JSON with the JSON encoder https://se.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/jsonencode.html as that has to be done through the field names of a struct, incorrectly like this

jsonObj = struct('file-series-version', 1); % This will generate 'Invalid field name "file-series-version".'
jsonencode(jsonObj)

So, is there any standardized way of creating these kind of JSON objects with the jsonencode function? My alternative would be to use camelCase on the field names, and regex over the JSON-string after encoding to convert them into kebab-case, but that is not a generally good idea.

Answer 1

[Harsha Priya Daggubati]

Hi,

A valid field name of a structure begin with a letter, and can contain letters, digits, and underscores. So use of hyphen for a fieldname is not supported in MATLAB. Use of camelCase, or using underscore instead of hyphen (you can use regular expression to convert to kebab-case later) sound as suitable workarounds for your issue.

[Olov Günther-Hanssen]

Thanks for the confirmation, even though the fix is a bit more tedious.

[stedst9]

I'm having the same isssue. I understand Matlab's field name requirements. What is the fix (or workaround) to get hyphens/dashes (-) in the field names of JSON???

[Walter Roberson]

@stedst9

Use underscore in the field names. Generate the JSON. Modify the JSON

S = readlines('AppropriateFilename.JSON');
S = regexprep(S, '_', '-');
writelines(S, 'AppropriateFilename.JSON')