I've been making a simulated sports pyramid (sort of like the English football pyramid) in Java with various leagues and a complex system of tiers and leagues and tournaments and promotion/relegation between them. It's pretty complicated and it's a lot of information, so I didn't want to hardcode it, so I've been trying to put all the information defining the structure of the whole system in configuration files instead. Initially, I put that information in a series of csv files that look like this:
3,4,-3,5
3,2,2,1
4,3,2,3,0
6,5,1,2
7,6,5,2,3,0
8,7,1,2,9
I wrote a function that parses it, and that works absolutely fine, but, just looking at it, that file's pretty incomprehensible; I had to write a whole guide so that I could interpret what these files meant (and that's not even considering how awful it would be for anyone else if they took a look at this).
So, I want to put this data in some sort of key:value system instead for it to be more readable. The data itself is defining a whole bunch of different tournaments, leagues, etc., so it'd be ideal if the data could be nested, so I don't think Properties will work for it (although I'd prefer something that wouldn't need external libraries).
I've worked with JSON before with other languages, so I impulsively decided to encode all the data into a config.json file before I knew how I would deserialize it into my application.
My data (in JSON at least), looks like something like this:
{
"tiers" : [
{
"id" : 100,
"name" : "League of Kings",
"scheduleString" : "standard",
"leagues" : [16]
},
{
"id" : 200,
"name" : "The Neck",
"scheduleString" : "standard",
"leagues" : [8]
},
{
"id" : 300,
"name" : "Group Tier",
"scheduleString" : "standard",
"leagues" : [5,5,5,5,5,5]
}
],
"movements" : [
{
"origin" : [100],
"destination" : [200],
"comparator" : "standard",
"ranks" : [15,16],
"priority" : 1,
"group" : 0
},
{
"origin" : [100],
"destination" : [1],
"comparator" : "random",
"ranks" : [1],
"priority" : 2,
"group" : 0
},
{
"origin" : [200],
"destination" : [1],
"comparator" : "standard",
"ranks" : [8],
"priority" : 1,
"group" : 0
},
{
"origin" : [200],
"destination" : [100],
"comparator" : "standard",
"ranks" : [1,2,3],
"priority" : 1,
"group" : 0
}
],
"tournaments" : [
{
"origin" : [[300]],
"destination" : [200],
"comparator" : ["standard"],
"ranks" : [[1]],
"output" : 2,
"winners" : true,
"special" : false,
"priority" : 1,
"group" : 0
}
],
"topTier" : 100,
"maxRounds" : 50,
"multichampThreshold" : 5,
"deadCollectionId" : 1
}
The main problem that I have is that there's so many JSON Java libraries out there, I have no idea which one (if any) will work best for my application here.
I have my own constructors for these objects that I'd like to use, so I don't really want to use the direct JSON -> object mapping tools that I've in some of the libraries out there (edit: this is called data binding I think?).
I'd just like to be able to do something sort of like this:
JSONObject obj = JSON.parseFile("config.json");
ArrayList<Tier> tiers = new ArrayList<Tier>();
for (JSONObject tierObj : obj.getArray("tiers")) {
Tier newTier = new Tier(tierObj.getInt("id"), tierObj.getString("name"));
tiers.add(newTier);
}
Which Java JSON library do you think would be the best for me to use here? Or should I switch back to using some other sort of data encoding (Properties, XML, etc.)? Or should I just write my own JSON parser to do the work instead?
Here are the relevant class definitions:
public final class Tier {
private final int id;
private final String name;
private final League[] leagues;
}
public class TeamCollection {
private final int id;
private final String name;
private final int maxLength;
private ArrayList<Team> teams;
}
public final class League extends TeamCollection implements Comparable<League> {
private final String scheduleString;
private int[][][] schedule;
}
public class MovementHandler {
private final TeamCollection[] origin;
private final TeamCollection[] destination;
private final RankHandler rh;
private final int priority;
private final int group;
private boolean active;
}
public class TournamentHandler {
private final TeamCollection[][] origins;
private final TeamCollection[] destination;
private final RankHandler[] rhs;
private final Tournament tournament;
private final int priority;
private final int group;
private boolean active;
}
public final class Tournament {
private final int id;
private final String name;
private final int numOutputTeams;
private final boolean winnersBracket;
private final boolean special;
private boolean printPlayerMatches;
private ArrayList<Team> inputTeams;
private ArrayList<Team> outputTeams;
private ArrayList<Team> currentTeams;
private int round;
}
public class RankHandler {
private final Comparator<Team> comparator;
private final int[] ranks;
private final boolean random;
private final boolean all;
}
So, just to clarify what exactly I want the configuration file to define, I want the "tiers" section of the configuration file to define a list of Tiers (and the Leagues that are contained within), and I want the "movements" section to define a list of Movement Handlers (and the Rank Handlers that they use), and I want the "tournaments" section to define a list of Tournament Handlers (and the Rank Handlers that they use and the Tournaments that they are associated with; a 1:1 ratio there). And I also have a couple of normal configuration things that I need to set, but I don't think that should be a problem.
