5 ms·

I think I’d prefer JSON over both XML and YAML when dealing with config files. XML is just to verbose, making it harder to parse in my brain. YAML is whitespa

• yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  I'm fine with JSON except it doesn't officially do comments, but that's a big deal IMO
  • sixothree 3y ago
    Which is especially problematic for config files where you want helpful hints or a place to store the “old value” while you do something else with the app. I have an app where I change a specific config almost every time I use it. I usually just copy the entire darn node and rename it to something that doesn’t get deserialized. Closest I can get to holding the value in a comment.
  • Koffiepoeder 3y ago
    Might be interesting to check out json5. https://json5.org/ https://json5.org/
    • FlyingSnake 3y ago
      This is a great example why we should avoid writing custom DSLs and just use a proper programming language.
      • eitland 3y ago
        Then again, Gradle has come to show why that is a terrible idea. I think at some point 24 out of 28 Gradle projects I had access to at a certain customer had variations in either kotlin/Groovy style or the way they did or didn't use variables, how they did or didn't do loops or maps and what not. With Maven you (or someone who know Maven) can immediately look at a rather small, very standardized file and start making educated guesses and so can an IDE. With Gradle you sometimes have to run it to actually know what it will do.
        • aftoprokrustes 3y ago
          I had the same experience with Maven vs SBT (scala build system, config is scala). At first it is really cool to have access to a full programming language (in particular when it is the same as the one the project is in, which means that you do not need to "switch brains" when working on the config), but quickly people start trying to be smart or cute, and it becomes a big mess. In particular in Scala, where people _love_ defining new DSLs and favor cuteness over readability. After two years working with SBT I still do not really understand some of the DSLish constructs used in there (and I tried to read the docs). On the other side I fell in the trap of trying to overcome the limitations of purely declarative config formats by using jinja templates, which also ended up being a very bad idea and a maintenance nightmare. For most projects, my approach is now to try to be as standard as possible compared to the particular community in the tech at end, and resist the urge to be smart or cute (hard!). Configuration always sucks, and I now prefer to just suck it up and get done with the config part, rather than loosing time reinventing the wheel, ending with a config that still sucks _and_ no one understands.
          • eitland 3y ago
            The good thing about Maven is it is XML so everyone wants to keep it as short as possible ;-) (More seriously: with Maven shorter and more boring is a sign that everything is correctly configured. Maven works by the convention over configuration principle so if you don't configure something it means it follows the standard. Which again means if you see someone has configured for example a folder or something that usually isn't configured it means they have put something in a non standard location.)
  • JD557 3y ago
    I think it's only popular in the scala ecosystem, but I find HOCON to be a pretty nice superset.
• deleted 3y ago
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• frant-hartm 3y ago
  You know that JSON is subset of yaml, right?
  • dragonwriter 3y ago
    Since most people’s (especially critics) understanding of YAML is stuck on YAML 1.1 where that wasn't quite true, probably not.
  • arwineap 3y ago
    The commenter said they preferred json over yaml because yaml is whitespace sensitive; Json is not yaml's feature set is also too broad, forcing safe loaders
    • bshacklett 3y ago
      I think the point is that if something accepts YAML, you can feed it JSON without issue. > yaml's feature set is also too broad, forcing safe loaders Could you elaborate?
      • arwineap 3y ago
        Yaml tags allow for serialization of native types, and has been abused to run malicious code. I think you can also make circular references in yaml effectively making a zip bomb This is why you have yaml.safe_load in Python and SafeConstructor in Java's snakeyaml package The end result is that you should not use yaml to handle untrusted data unless you are also explicitly handling it safely
        • bshacklett 3y ago
          Any de-serialization should be done via safe loaders. Using `require()` or `eval()` isn't something I'd do outside of a very narrow set of scenarios.
          • arwineap 3y ago
• physicsguy 3y ago
  Much easier to have invalid JSON than invalid XML as jsonschema isn’t even close
• planede 3y ago
  XML is whitespace sensitive, unless your particular schema just doesn't care about whitespace text nodes.