[SOLVED] how do I read and write from/to a JSON file in the root folder of my project?

how do I read and write from/to a JSON file in the root folder of my project?

I'm trying to access a JSON file in the same folder as my App.js file with expo-file-system to read and write from and to it, but I can't seem to be able to no matter what I do.

Here's an image of my project's folder (yes weird file names but that's not important right now)

Expo version 51.0.38

I tried using FileSystem.bundleDirectory with my file name:

import * as FileSystem from "expo-file-system"

...
...
...

const JSONPath = FileSystem.bundleDirectory + "myData.json";

console.log(JSONPath); // outputs  asset:/myData.json
        
FileSystem.readAsStringAsync(JSONPath).then(res => {
    console.log(JSON.stringify(res)); // Doesn't write anything to the console
});

but this throws an exception:

Console Warning: Possible unhandled promise rejection (id: 2): Error: Call to function 'ExponentFileSystem.readAsStringAsync' has been rejected. -> Caused by: java.io.FileNotFoundException: myData.json

I also tried the same but with FileSystem.documentDirectory:

import * as FileSystem from "expo-file-system"

...
...
...

const JSONPath = FileSystem.documentDirectory + "myData.json";

console.log(JSONPath); // outputs  file:///data/user/0/host.exp.exponent/files/myData.json

FileSystem.readAsStringAsync(JSONPath).then(res => {
    console.log(JSON.stringify(res));  // Doesn't write anything to the console
});

but this throws another exception:

Console Warning: Possible unhandled promise rejection (id: 3): Error: Call to function 'ExponentFileSystem.readAsStringAsync' has been rejected. -> Caused by: java.io.FileNotFoundException: /data/user/0/host.exp.exponent/files/myData.json (No such file or directory)

I also tried using @expo/json-file, but it threw an error saying that it uses fs, which is incompatible with Expo.

So I'm stuck here, I've been searching for the whole day and I found nothing, so any help would be very much appreciated. Also, while I'm at it, what's the difference between documentDirectory and bundleDirectory ??

Solution

Update: I ended up using expo-sqlite instead of the JSON files, it works better in my case because it acts as a local database and can be queried on.

Here's the official documentation -> https://docs.expo.dev/versions/latest/sdk/sqlite/