Name

JSONY - Relaxed JSON with a little bit of YAML

Version

This document describes JSONY version 0.1.19.

Synopsis

use JSONY;

my $data = JSONY->new->load($jsony_string);

Description

JSONY is a data language that is simlar to JSON, just more chill. All valid JSON is also valid JSONY (and represents the same thing when loaded), but JSONY lets you omit a lot of the syntax that makes JSON a pain to write.

API

JSONY has one instance method: load. You pass it a JSONY string and it returns the loaded Perl data object.

JSONY Syntax

Here is some examples of JSONY followed by equivalent JSON:

Words don't need quotes. A list of things is an array:

foo bar baz

[ "foo", "bar", "baz" ]

Strings with spaces can use single or double quotes:

'foo bar'      # <= This is (a comment indicating) a string
# More commenting
"baz  boom "

[ "foo bar ", "baz  boom " ]

Top level hashes can be ':' separated pairs or use curlies. Sub hashes require curlies.

foo: { bar baz }
num: -1.2e3

{ "foo": { "bar": "baz" }, "num": -1.2e3 }

Top level arrays can use '- ' at the start of lines. Those arrays go the end of line. Lines can be continued using a trailing comma. Sub arrays require square brackets.

- array of 4 scalars
- array with [ sub
  array { of
  things }]
- array of 7 things on,
  two lines

[
  [ "array", "of", 4, "scalars" ],
  [ "array", "with", [ "sub", "array", { "of": "things" } ] ],
  [ "array", "of", 7, "things", "on", "two", "lines" ]
]

NOTE: You may want to look at the tests (especially t/load.t) to see the full abilities of JSONY.

Status

JSONY has been in use for well over a year. It seems to working well.

Development people are working on this in #jsony and #pegex in irc.freenode.net. Please drop by.

JSONY.pm is a very simple Pegex-based parser. You can see the quite tiny JSONY grammar here: http://github.com/ingydotnet/jsony-pgx/blob/master/jsony.pgx

http://jsony.org coming soon.