# Theme create wizard generates invalid JSON

**URL:** <https://forum.shopware.com/t/theme-create-wizard-generates-invalid-json/102360>\
**Category:** Shopware 6 (English)\
**Created:** [22. Dezember 2023 um 12:14 UTC](https://forum.shopware.com/t/theme-create-wizard-generates-invalid-json/102360 "2023-12-22T12:14:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![openmindculture](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex013/user_avatar/forum.shopware.com/openmindculture/32/8658_2.png) [@openmindculture](https://forum.shopware.com/u/openmindculture)\
**Post date:** [22. Dezember 2023 um 12:14 UTC](https://forum.shopware.com/t/theme-create-wizard-generates-invalid-json/102360/1 "2023-12-22T12:14:23Z")

</div>

I used `bin/console plugin:create` to create a theme plugin named `IngoSDev6CertPrep`. I don’t remember how excactly I typed the name, but the wizard tried to write an escaped kebab-case version into the `composer.json` that JsonLint warns is invalid:

```auto
  [Seld\JsonLint\ParsingException]                                                            
  "/var/www/html/custom/plugins/IngoSDev6CertPrep/composer.json" does not contain valid JSON  
  Parse error on line 2:                                                                      
  { "name": "ingo-s\-dev6-cert-p                                                           
  ------------^                                                                               
  Invalid string, it appears you have an unescaped backslash at: \-dev

```

This affects the parts between vendor prefix and plugin name, maybe due to an unexpected capitalization. My vendor prefix ends with a capital „S“ which seemed to be valid so far. The plugin name starts with another capital letter, „D“, as I previously wrote everything together like „IngoSDev6CertPrep“. The theme wizard generates

- „name“: „ingo-s-dev6-cert-prep/ingo-s-dev6-cert-prep“,
- „shopware-plugin-class“: „IngoS\Dev6CertPrep\IngoSDev6CertPrep“,
- „autoload“: { „psr-4“: { „IngoS\Dev6CertPrep\“: „src/“

Update: I add a screenshot, as the forum seems to hide backslashes even if they are inside code blocks:

 ![Screenshot](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/flex013/uploads/shopware/original/3X/a/c/ace1a061ff3cc03c2f8665628be6c0759ee69745.png)

To make things worse, other `theme` commands don’t complain, they seem to fail silently and my theme is just not visible in the theme list. It only occured to me to look into my theme plugin’s `composer.json` when I tried to add the Symfony profiler which is missing in the current latest `dockware/dev` container (Shopware 6.5.7.3) so I typed (at Shopware root):

`composer require --dev symfony/profiler-pack`

That also linted the subdirectories and stopped at my plugin error.

Expected behavior:

- `plugin:create` never creates invalid JSON:
  - there should be no unnecessary escaping: `\-` could be `-`
  - optional escaping should always be correct: `\-` should be `\\-`
  - dashes/hyphens should be ecaped correctly: `\\` between namespace parts

- the theme name should not repeat both prefix and name: `"ingo-s-dev6-cert-prep/ingo-s-dev6-cert-prep"` should be `"ingo-s/ingo-s-dev6-cert-prep"`
- `theme` commands should lint and warn
- top-level composer commands can’t be broken by invalid plugin code.

Recommendations:

If anyone else wants to create plugins or themes using the wizard, always check and edit the generated files before proceeding! Keeep theme/plugin names short and simple, and if you haven’t chosen a vendor prefix yet, don’t use optional uppercase after the first character!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![openmindculture](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex013/user_avatar/forum.shopware.com/openmindculture/32/8658_2.png) [@openmindculture](https://forum.shopware.com/u/openmindculture)\
**Post date:** [11. Januar 2024 um 13:41 UTC](https://forum.shopware.com/t/theme-create-wizard-generates-invalid-json/102360/2 "2024-01-11T13:41:39Z")

</div>

Similar error: we can create themes that are valid enough to install and activate and show up in the UI’s extensions → themes list, but throw an `[ERROR] invalid theme name` when trying to assign them to the storefront using `bin/console theme:change`.  
I installed the additional optional SW CLI tools to use their plugin validator:  
`shopware-cli extension validate custom/plugins/MyTheme`  
only to see a successful `INFO Validation has been successful`.

But I still can’t apply the valid theme with the supposedly invalid name to the storefront.

I tried to mimic the structure of auto-generated themes so I have `"name": "IngoSDemoTogetherTheme"` in `theme.json` but `"name": "ingo-s/ingo-s-demo-together-theme"` in `composer.json`. PhpStorm + SW Plugin has no helpful warnings/recommendations either.

Related: [shopware6 - Invalid theme name error when trying to install valid Shopware theme - Stack Overflow](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/77800420/invalid-theme-name-error-when-trying-to-install-valid-shopware-theme)

As others suggested a corrupt database entry, I destroyed and rebuilt the container, reinstalled and activated the theme using the admin UI. Now I can even see and assign the theme to the storefront.

So far, so good. But I still don’t understand the error and how to fix and prevent it in the future.