Using separate .json files for NTTable definitions

[Érico Nogueira Rolim via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>]

Hi all!


I'm trying out using group definitions to create NTTable groups with
related information to be served by my IOC. I managed to make them work
with the "info(Q:group, ...)" fields in databases, but, when I tried to
use a separate .json file (not as relevant for my current use case, but
seems like it would be useful when retrofitting tables into existing
modules), I couldn't get it to work.


This is the definition I tried to use:


{
   "$(P)$(R)EventTable2-Mon": {
     "+id": "epics:nt/NTTable:1.0",
     "labels": {"+type": "plain", "+channel": "$(P)$(R)bufferLABELS"},
     "value.A": {"+type": "plain", "+channel": "$(P)$(R)TSbuffer.VAL"},
     "value.B": {"+type": "plain", "+channel":
"$(P)$(R)EVENTbuffer.VAL", "+trigger": "*"},
   }
}

Without quotes around the mapping names, I got errors from the json
parser, with both PVXS and epics-base's *CPP implementation:


Error from dbGroup file "../../db/event_log.json"
Error on line 3 : lexical error: invalid char in json text.
                                        +id: "epics:nt/NTTable:1.0",
                      (right here) ------^


However, with the quotes, dbLoadGroup doesn't error out, nor are any
errors printed after iocInit, but pvxgl does not list the table.


Are .json files supposed to be more limited? Or am I doing something
wrong? I couldn't find any docs going in depth into the json files (I
looked at [1] [2] [3]).


[1] https://urldefense.us/v3/__https://epics-base.github.io/pvxs/qgroup.html__;!!G_uCfscf7eWS!ZkcqIYOSuSHnDwdyHQN7hroMlRcHk8MhjbqxVyzSYijS645AhEcpgViz5a4iy70Qd2WTisrt6SnHQkDpbqFDi9HprPU$ 

[2]
https://urldefense.us/v3/__https://docs.epics-controls.org/projects/pva2pva/en/stable/doxygen/qsrv_page.html__;!!G_uCfscf7eWS!ZkcqIYOSuSHnDwdyHQN7hroMlRcHk8MhjbqxVyzSYijS645AhEcpgViz5a4iy70Qd2WTisrt6SnHQkDpbqFDhPt0pY0$ 

[3]
https://urldefense.us/v3/__https://docs.epics-controls.org/en/latest/pv-access/Normative-Types-Specification.html*nttable__;Iw!!G_uCfscf7eWS!ZkcqIYOSuSHnDwdyHQN7hroMlRcHk8MhjbqxVyzSYijS645AhEcpgViz5a4iy70Qd2WTisrt6SnHQkDpbqFDRtfc0-4$ 


Cheers,

Érico


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