What is the best file format for configuration file?

Comments

• AverageCakeSlice@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  JSON by a mile. I hate the YAML plague, it’s some of the most unintuitive syntax I’ve seen and yet it’s everywhere in DevOps/SysOps.

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  • Hexarei@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yeah, any language in which whitespace count is semantically significant can go suck fat nards.

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    • derpgon@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I mean, a valid JSON is a valid YAML

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    • bignavy@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Not sure whether fantastic troll or just no exposure to Python.

      Either way…I’m here for it.

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  • sylveon@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The only thing that really annoys me about JSON is that it doesn’t allow comments.

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    • Hexarei@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      JSON5, bay-beee

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  • nightmareofahorse@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps had me hating on YAML pretty quickly

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  • kersplort@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    YAML works better with git than JSON, but so much config work is copy and pasting and YAML is horrible at that.

    Having something where changing one line doesn’t turn into changing three lines, but you could also copy it off a website would be great.

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• pileghoff@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I usually use Json5. It’s JSON, but with all the weird quirks fixed (comments added, you can use hex numbers, you can have trailing commas etc.)

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  • 10nica@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Oh that’s interesting. Wonder how many libraries out there support it…

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    • kersplort@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I don’t know if it’s actual json5, but eslint and some other libraries use extended, commentable json in their config files.

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• MNByChoice@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The one with a validator provided to the user.

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• simonced@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  A lot of good answers but I would add one note:

  • use a format that supports comments, and JSON is not one of those…

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  • AeroLemming@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Of course it does!

    {
      comment: "This data is super important and it runs the system or something",
      data: ["Some", "stuff", "here"]
    }
    

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    • noli@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You disgust me

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    • sfera@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      How do you comment multiple properties separately?

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    • simonced@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      This is actually pretty genius, why haven’t ever thought of that?

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  • kersplort@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    JSON5 is a superset of JSON that supports comments.

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  • ChairmanMeow@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I believe the JSON deserializer .NET ships with has options to allow C#-style comments in JSON files.

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  • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    json with comments can be parsed by a yaml parser. It’s how I write yaml, in fact (yaml is a superset of json. any valid json is valid yaml, but it also supports comments)

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• spartanatreyu@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It depends what you need your configuration file to be:

  Need a well defined easy to understand concrete configuration file?

  • Use .toml. It was made to be both human and computer friendly while taking special attention to avoid the pitfalls commonly found in other configuration files by explicitly stating expected types around commonly confused areas.

  Need a simple to implement configuration file?

  • Use .json. It’s famous for being so simple it’s creator “discoverer” could define it on a business card.

  Need an abstract configuration file for more complicated setups?

  • Use .ncl. Nickle allows you to define functions so that you can generate/compute the correct configuration by changing a few variables/flags.

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• aport@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  .ini

  ducks

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  • coloredgrayscale@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Give the windows registry a shot.

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• rikudou@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Yaml for me, I really like it. And the fact that every valid JSON is also a valid YAML is nice.

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  • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Please do not use YAML. It’s a syntactic minefield. It also doesn’t allow tab indentation, which is supremely irritating.

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    • rikudou@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      As I said, I like it the most, so I will use it. I like its syntax (except for yes and no for booleans, but nothing’s perfect). I don’t care much for tabs vs spaces, I use tab in my IDE and whatever it does, it does.

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  • magnus@lemmy.ahall.se ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    YAML here as well.

    Configuration many levels deep gets so much harder for me to read and write in JSON with all [], {} and “”

    Also the lack of comments… And YAML still is more used in software I’m using than JSON5, so I’d rather skip yet another format/library to keep track of.

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• ImpossibleRubiksCube@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Easily the format no one’s heard of that you jammed together in your attic when you were twelve.

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• vrkr@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  No reason to go beyond simple key-value format like dotenv or just env variables. If you need more structure you may be confusing configuration with state and this is not really the same thing.

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• Andy@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  nestedtext.org

  It’s like yaml but simple, consistent, untyped, and you never need to escape any characters, ever.

  Types and validation aren’t going to be great unless they’re in the actual code anyway.

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  • timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Agreed.

    I honestly don’t understand anyone who likes json over it. Json is fine for certain things but manually typing that is pain ten times over. It’s better than XML surely but not by terribly much.

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• BitSound@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Dhall

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  • Hexarei@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Bruh. I want to use this for my dotfiles. Thanks for sharing it!

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    • philm@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You might want to checkout NixOS (or home-manager if you don’t want a cold deep dive into a rabbit-hole).

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• Edo78@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It really depends. I usually prefer json. It’s easily understandable from humans and from machines, it doesn’t depends on indentation and above everything else I like it very much 🤣

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• philm@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Depends on what you mean exactly with “file format”.

  If declarative functional programming falls under that, I think something like Nickel, the already mentioned Dhall or Nix. Though Nix more so for packaging and some kind of system management (NixOS?), it’s not easily embeddable into a runtime (your app?). Nickel or Dhall is better for that, as they are built from ground up with that in mind, Nickel is maybe the successor of Nix as it is inspired by Dhall and Nix (one goal is to use it Nickel as frontend).

  The reason why I recommend a simple declarative language, is that that they are much better composable as it lets the user hide boilerplate via functions. I almost always feel limited by static configuration formats like yaml, json etc…

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• bignavy@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  .xml

  Relevant.

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  • kersplort@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    XML would be great if it wasn’t for the extended XML universe of namespaces and imports.

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    • ImpossibleRubiksCube@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      AKA “The XML Cinematic Universe”

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• randomblock1@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Need it to be user editable in a text editor? YAML. Otherwise, JSON.

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• Skyzyx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Whatever. Comments are helpful, which makes pure JSON a poor choice. JSON5 or JSON-C are better, but linting and static analysis are important to every form of code, so make sure that what you use for that will understand your syntax.

  My current preference is generally TOML, but I’ve started dabbling with custom HCL2 DSLs. (I write a lot of Go and Terraform.)

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• greysemanticist@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Might be somewhat partial to CueLang but that needs an external tool to fiddle with.

  I mostly use YAML or TOML depending on what’s being configured.

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• lorefnon@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Tyson is nice - esp. if you are already using TS/JS.

  github.com/jetpack-io/tyson

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