Visio JSON Exort

[Nikolay]

> They do not use Visio

I see. But if they won't need to edit diagrams (as they don't use Visio), can't you do this JSON export for them (once, yourself)?

>You do not export user cells or shape properties, right?

Regarding properties, it is just probably bad example file (all shapes without properties).
Attached another (older) example has shape properties. I do not export cells, they are kind of useless for me (i.e. only "shape data" is exported)

> What does sid / cid mean?

"sid" is a target shape id.
"cid" is a connector shape id (i.e. the line). Added recently for highlighting them, here:
https://svgpublish-sb.unmanagedvisio.com/?path=/story/basic-prevnext--database-diagram

"Text" is a search index for each shape (used for shape search, includes indexed properties)
Actual shape text is "@" (shape.Characters.Text)

There is some other stuff exported as well, like minimal info about pages and layers (to be able to toggle them)

Short names just to make file smaller

[Thomas Winkel]

Are they driving gnd machines?

gnd machines?
If you mean CNC, then no.
One goal could be to analyse schematics like above to generate software that controls the IO.
The schematics holds information about IO mappings, configurations, signal names, scalings, etc. in shape properties.
The logic can be derived by following the connections.
But please don't get stuck on this example. My goal is to create a generic export that can be used for many possible further processing steps.

But if they won't need to edit diagrams (as they don't use Visio), can't you do this JSON export for them (once, yourself)?

Yes, this would be the way to go.

Your export is very much in the direction I imagine. In addition, I need at least user defined cells, connection points (including D-Cell) as well as page and document properties.

Your SplitPagesService.cs is really impressive, but honestly for me it's hard to read and to understand
I think a well structured JSON will be much easier to parse.

[Nikolay]

That one parses VSDX directly (i.e. can be used to get an idea what it could take to parse VSDX file directly)
All that code does is basically just removing all pages from a file except one (passed as a number)

Using API that stuff would look something like this:

Code Select Expand

for (i = pages.Count; i > 0; --i) {
  if (i != pageToKeep) page.Delete();
}

The code is just using .NET SDK (System.IO.Packaging) to work with the VSDX package
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.io.packaging

My point was that using Visio COM API to extract JSON could be 10x times easier than parsing VSDX directly

[Thomas Winkel]

My point was that using Visio COM API to extract JSON could be 10x times easier that parsing VSDX directly

That's exactly my point. 10 times easier using COM than parsing VSDX, 10 times easier parsing JSON than parsing VSDX.
I extract a JSON (using COM) and the customer doesn't have to bother with VSDX.
But if I do so, it should be generic enough that it can be used in many other scenarios.

I would open source it and provide a NuGet package.
Also I could provide a Python library to map this JSON object into a class for easier handling (-> Intellisense).
I'm not a Python expert, but I think this can be done with Pydantic.

[wapperdude]

gnd machines?
If you mean CNC, then no.

Yes.  Missed the autocorrect incorrrection.

Other than using Visio as a source document, seems like there are many schematic capture programs out there that do this, front to back design to layout, with simulation, worst case analysis, and error support.  Visio doesn't have the capability to answer / support all of these facets of a project design and development.

[Nikolay]

@Thomas Winkel
I think the customer may be just under the impression that Visio's XML is somewhat like drawio's XML,
Or what we had before with .VDX (a plain XML format, that was discontinued)

[Thomas Winkel]

NuGet for export with .NET:
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Geradeaus.VisioJsonExport

Code Select Expand

Geradeaus.VisioJsonExport.ExportHandler exportHandler = new Geradeaus.VisioJsonExport.ExportHandler(Globals.ThisAddIn.Application.ActiveDocument);
exportHandler.Parse();
exportHandler.Export(@"C:\Temp\VisioExport.json");


PyPi for processing in Python:
https://pypi.org/project/visio-json-export

Code Select Expand

import visio_json_export

visio = visio_json_export.load_file(r'C:\Temp\VisioExport.json')

for page in visio.document.pages.values():
    for shape in page.shapes.values():
        for row_name, user in shape.user_rows.items():
            print(page.name + ' -> ' + shape.name + ' -> ' + row_name + ' = ' + user.value)
        for prop in shape.prop_rows.values():
            print(page.name + ' -> ' + shape.name + ' -> ' + prop.label + ' = ' + prop.value)

Next I integrate layers to support our variant management system.