GRASS GSoC 2024 Add JSON output

Accepted Google Summer of Code 2024 project.

Student Name:	Kriti Birda
Organization:	OSGeo - Open Source Geospatial Foundation
Mentor Name:	Corey White and Vaclav Petras
Title:	Add JSON output to different GRASS tools in C

Abstract

At the moment, most of the tools in Grass have custom human readable outputs in plain text. Some of these modules could benefit from storing their output in a portable and commonly used data format. The aim of my project is to use the parson library in various tools so that they can produce JSON outputs. The addition of JSON as an output format will be accompanied with addition of Python test cases to verify the output works as intended and to avoid regressions in future. An option to specify the desired output format (plain or JSON) will also be added to each of the tools updated. The layout of the JSON format will be discussed with mentors prior to implementation and will be optimized towards easy ingestion with Pandas.

Pull Requests

Module	PR Title	PR Link	Status at end of GSoC Period
lib	add standard parser option for JSON formatting	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/3704/	merged
r.info	add JSON output	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/3744/	merged
v.info	add JSON output	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/3755/	merged
r.univar	add JSON output	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/3783/	merged
v.univar	add JSON output	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/3784/	merged
r.profile	add JSON output	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/3872/	merged
r.stats	add JSON output	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/3884/	open
r.report	add JSON output	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/3935/	merged
g.region	add JSON output	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/3941/	merged
v.distance	add JSON output	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/3942/	open
r.category	add JSON output	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/4018/	merged
v.category	add JSON output	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/4020/	open
db.describe	add JSON output	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/4021/	merged
v.to.db	add JSON output	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/4036/	open
g.proj	add JSON output	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/4104/	open
r.object.geometry	add JSON output	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/4105/	merged
g.region	fix ruff lint error in tests	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/4167/	merged
db.describe	fix illegal memory access report	https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/4202/	merged

Reports

Introduction: https://discourse.osgeo.org/t/gsoc-2024-introduction-juno/28253

Community Bonding Period: https://discourse.osgeo.org/t/gsoc-2024-week-0-report-add-json-support-to-grass-modules/28299

1. Week 1: https://discourse.osgeo.org/t/gsoc-2024-week-1-report-add-json-support-to-grass-modules/30673
2. Week 2: https://discourse.osgeo.org/t/gsoc-2024-week-2-report-add-json-support-to-grass-modules/30764
3. Week 3: https://discourse.osgeo.org/t/gsoc-2024-week-3-report-add-json-support-to-grass-modules/30791
4. Week 4: https://discourse.osgeo.org/t/gsoc-2024-week-4-report-add-json-support-to-grass-modules/30834
5. Week 5: https://discourse.osgeo.org/t/gsoc-2024-week-5-report-add-json-support-to-grass-modules/30882
6. Week 6: https://discourse.osgeo.org/t/gsoc-2024-week-6-report-add-json-support-to-grass-modules/30906
7. Week 7: https://discourse.osgeo.org/t/gsoc-2024-week-7-report-add-json-support-to-grass-modules/30946
8. Week 8: https://discourse.osgeo.org/t/gsoc-2024-week-8-report-add-json-support-to-grass-modules/30993
9. Week 9: https://discourse.osgeo.org/t/gsoc-2024-week-9-report-add-json-support-to-grass-modules/31007
10. Week 10: https://discourse.osgeo.org/t/gsoc-2024-week-10-report-add-json-support-to-grass-modules/49643
11. Week 12: https://discourse.osgeo.org/t/gsoc-2024-week-12-report-add-json-support-to-grass-modules/49735

Final: https://discourse.osgeo.org/t/gsoc-2024-final-report-add-json-output-to-different-tools-in-c/49784

Examples

# Python example with dictionary

# Python example with Pandas

# Bash example with jq