In the thread for my Wordle clone, I mentioned that I have been thinking about data files. I figured I’d share a proof of concept and a teaser of my next project.
I don’t have an editor for the data file yet. I basically exported the contents of a database that I created for a different project and then massaged the CSV file into a JSON file. The “important” data is encoded so that you don’t accidentally view the questions and answers. I also hacked together an “extension of an extension,” allowing the excellent Text Sprite extension to handle long strings by wrapping lines.
This one is going to take a bit of time yet, but I thought the basis of the project might inspire some of you to take the core of it and use the ideas in your own JavaScript projects.
Just in case any of you want to dig deeper into this idea, I cleaned this up a bit last night and fixed the hilarious typo in the question that randomly appeared in the original screenshot.
The data1.ts file is closer to what I’m envisioning for the output of some sort of data file generator. Here’s my leading candidate for a design:
Use a generic tool to create a SQLite database with the data. There are many really good, cross-platform tools out there, like DBeaver and SQLite Studio. Why reinvent the wheel!
Create a translation app.
Read the tables from the database.
Present a simple UI to the user to select tables, columns, and which columns to encrypt.
Generate TypeScript files that can be copied and pasted into a MakeCode project.
I’m thinking C# to build a web app that can be tossed into Azure Static Pages. Easy enough to build native apps, too, with .NET.
I can think of at least two use cases.
The obvious use case is to store questions and answers for a quiz game.
Another really cool use case would be for interactive fiction.
Happy to entertain any thoughts or ideas that y’all have. Just felt like doing a brain dump to sort and clarify some of my thoughts.
Happy Wednesday! Hope you’ve all had a great start to the week!
