Serving structured data

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Serving structured data

Structured data (YAML and JSON files) is very typical for UI development to keep settings, texts and other structured information.

HMI service provides a feature, called “serve as”, which allows to convert any structured data file on-the-flow and load it into UI applications in the most convenient way.

This feature is supported by both public UI (“/ui” URLs) and Serving private data (PVT) and enabled automatically for all YAML and JSON files.

Format conversion

To convert a structured file into another format, request it as:

/ui/filename.yml?as=FMT

where FMT:

yml (or yaml) - convert the file into YAML
json - convert the file into JSON
js - convert the file into JavaScript (requires either “var” or “func” as the additional parameter)

e.g. let’s convert YAML, which is usually more human-editable and preferred to keep configs, into JSON:

/ui/filename.yml?as=json

The file can also be converted on-the-flow to JavaScript variable, or, as copying JavaScript arrays and dicts is usually tricky, into the function, which returns the structured data on every call:

/ui/filename.yml?as=js&func=myfunc

An additional argument “lang” can be used to apply the chosen locale on all string fields of structured data file. Multi-line strings are processed with indents kept as-is, string formatting (left and right white spaces) is preserved:

/ui/test.yml?as=json&lang=LANG

The “lang” argument always must be combined with “as”, unless the data is served from the registry.

Firstly, an i18n file must be created. The tree must have the following schema e.g. (“cs” is for Czech language):

pvt
└── locales
    └── cs
        └── LC_MESSAGES
            ├── messages.po
            ├── tests
            └────── test.po

“.po” files are standard Gettext files, which look as:

msgid "this is a test"
msgstr "je to test"

or e.g. for Japanese (UTF-8):

#, fuzzy
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8\n"

msgid "this is a test"
msgstr "これはテストです"

(note that if diacritic is used e.g. in Czech language messages, the file must have UTF-8 encoding specified as well)

The files can be compiled with “msgfmt” Linux command from “gettext” package (installed by default by majority Linux distributions):

msgfmt file.po -o file.mo

EVA ICS HMI service uses the following strategy to find locale files. E.g. if the document

/ui/tests/test.yml?as=json&lang=cs

is served, the message files are looked up in the following order:

EVA_DIR/pvt/locales/cs/LC_MESSAGES/tests/test.mo
EVA_DIR/pvt/locales/cs/LC_MESSAGES/tests/messages.mo
EVA_DIR/pvt/locales/cs/LC_MESSAGES/messages.mo

(the last file is the standard common message file). If no message file is found, the strings are served as-is, without any conversion.

Note

Altrenatively, locale files can be kept in EVA_DIR/ui/locales. EVA ICS HMI service automatically searches for the locale files in “ui” if no locale files found in “pvt”.

Generating

Make sure Gettext is installed:

command -v msgfmt

in case if missing, install it with (e.g. for Debian/Ubuntu):

apt -y install gettext

To auto-generate / update “.po” files from JSON or YAML strings, a supplied tool “gen-intl” can be used (multiple languages can be specified at once):

/opt/eva4/bin/gen-intl -u /opt/eva4/ui -o /opt/eva4/pvt/locales -l cs /opt/eva4/ui/tests/test.yml generate

The above command auto-generates or updates “test.po” file and puts it to the corresponding locale path. E.g. if the file absolute path is /opt/eva4/ui/tests/test.yml, the result “.po” file is written to /opt/eva4/pvt/locales/cs/LC_MESSAGES/tests/test.po.

After editing, compile “.po” file manually with “msgfmt”, or run

/opt/eva4/bin/gen-intl -u /opt/eva4/ui -o /opt/eva4/pvt/locales -l cs /opt/eva4/ui/tests/test.yml compile

Note

As in EVA ICS v4 ui and pvt directories can have any custom locations, specifying “-u” and “-o” options for “gen-intl” is mandatory.

Locale cache

Message files are cached by EVA ICS gettext library, until the HMI service is restarted.

The cache can be purged with the bus RPC call “i18n.cache_purge” to the HMI service (e.g. with eva-shell):

/opt/eva4/bin/eva svc call eva.hmi.default i18n.cache_purge