JSON and XML importer in Quartz Composer only working intermittently

Question

I've recently started having a look into Quartz Composer and I'm trying to get it to download some JSON from the web and turn it into a structure. From what I can tell, the "Climb JSON Importer" plugin does exactly what I need.

The problem I have is that's it seems to be intermittent. Sometimes you can hover over the output and see the JSON structure, but often the tooltip simply says Type: Structure.

I've tried using a local copy of the JSON file instead of downloading it, I've toggled the "Update Signal" flag, I've even hooked it up to the Wave Generator to try and make it do periodic updates, all to no avail.

I'm also pretty confident it's not the third-party plugin, since I have the same issues if I try and use the built-in XML importer. Is there something I'm missing here? Are there any useful debug mechanisms so I can see what it is (or isn't) doing?

Answer 1

In Quartz Composer, patches only execute if they're connected to a blue "Renderer" patch. When hovering over a port, if you see the type name, but no data, the patch might not be executing.

A quick way to do this is to create a Billboard patch, and to connect the JSON patch's output to the Billboard's Enable input — it won't display anything, but it will cause the JSON patch to execute, so you can browse the data by hovering over its output ports.