RJ

RJ(Readable JSON), is a config file format. It borrows name and value specs mostly from JSON, and makes the file readable. Human readability makes it straightforward for developers to read and write, and "JSON" makes it easy to be parsed into data structures of different languages.

Example

# This is a RJ(Readable JSON) doc

name: "Example"
versionCode: 1
versionName: "0.0.1"
# Line breaks and indents are allowed inside an array
targetedPlatform: ["amd","amd64",
                    "arm","arm64"] 

# Node can be mapped to a JSON object
[publisher]
name: "FIPress"
email: "[email protected]"
    [publisher.]

# Node list can be mapped to a JSON array of objects
[dependencies]
- name: "a"
  version: 1  # The indentation here is optional
- name: "b"   
  version: 2
  
   

Brief

• RJ is UTF-8 encoded.
• RJ is a set of JSON name/value pairs. The difference is, they are separated by line breaks instead of comma ,.
• Filename extension .rj is recommended.

Spec

Name/value pairs

Mostly, the name/value pairs followed JSON specs, except for object and object list values. In RJ, each pair takes a line, except for multiple-line-strings and arrays.

Name

Since all names are strings, we do NOT surround them with quotes " in RJ.

Value

RJ follows the same rule of strings, numbers, booleans, "null", objects and arrays as JSON. Besides, RJ supports two more kinds of values.

Raw string Raw strings are surrounded by backticks ```.

Datetime

Comment

A comment starts from a hash symbol #. It can take a whole line, or at the end of a line.

Node

A node is equals to a name/value pair with an object value. The node name is the pair's name, and it should be surround with square brackets, [NodeName]. The node name will take a full line, the value take the next lines. And, a blank line ends a node.

[student]
name: "Jason"
age: 14

# Above blank line is required if there is other data below that does not belong to `student`   

It equals to following name/value pair in RJ.

student: {name: "Json", 
    age: 14}  # line breaks inside braces are allowed 

And it maps to following JSON.

{"sdudent": {"name": "Json", "age": 14}}

Child node Child nodes are marked by their full names. A full name is parentName.childName. For example, if node b is a child node of node a, its name should be a.b and if b has a child node c, its name should be a.b.c, and so on.

[student]
name: "Jason"
age: 14

[student.address]
city: "Round Rock"
zipCode: "123456"

It equals to:

[student]
name: "Jason"
age: 14
address: {city: "Round Rock",zipCode: "123456"}

That represents following JSON.

{"sdudent": {"name": "Json", "age": 14, "address": {"city": "Round Rock", "zipCode": "123456"}}}

Node list

A node list is actually a name/value pair with value of a object list. The name of a node list follows the same rule as a node. Each item starts with a -.

[player]
- name: "Amy"
  age: 22
- name: "Clare"
  age: 21

That is equals to following name/value pair.

player: [{name: "Amy", age: 22},
        {name: "Clare", age: 21}]  # line breaks inside square brackets are allowed 

Above RJ maps to following JSON.

{"player": [{"name": "Amy", "age": 22},
        {"name": "Clare", "age": 21}] 
}