Often find myself getting frustrated editing yaml, and it seems to be used everywhere for some reason I cannot fathom
I have an idea to write an editor plugin that will, when opening a yaml file, convert it to json (or some other less painful configuration language), then convert back on save. I don’t know enough about yaml syntax to know if that’s possible or if there’s some quirk that makes them not completely cross compatible
Or alternatively if it exists a better CLI tool for editing yaml than just a normal text editor because I’m getting sick of pasting in a block of yaml and then having to fix the 8 indentation errors that somehow spawn from that
I could see some problems when working with yaml anchors, otherwise the conversion should work fine. But yeah, using a good editor should fix most problems and would be much easier
What kind of problems? I’m unfamiliar with anchors in yaml
They are basically constants where you can define reoccurring sections once and reference them multiple times throughout the file. A processor will then resolve these. As gar as I know, there is no comparable concept in JSON so they could get lost in translation
Same bruv. I hear your cries of pain, sympathize greatly
YAML to JSON is probably doable, JSON back to YAML not so much.
There are multiple ways to mark multiline strings in YAML. Then there are anchors, like bionicjoey mentioned. Also comments, YAML has them. You’d have to have some way to retain the extra information, if you want to make the full round trip.
Here’s an example:
def-db: &def-db # here be dragons login: admin passwd: nimda prod: db: *def-db desc: | I'm a teapot short and stout dev: db: <<: *def-db passwd: pass desc: "I'm a teapot\nshort and stout\n"converted to JSON looks like this
{ "def-db": { "login": "admin", "passwd": "nimda" }, "prod": { "db": { "login": "admin", "passwd": "nimda" }, "desc": "I'm a teapot\nshort and stout\n" }, "dev": { "db": { "login": "admin", "passwd": "pass" }, "desc": "I'm a teapot\nshort and stout\n" } }All JSON is valid YAML, so after you’ve converted the file to JSON, just… save it with a YAML file extension and call it a day…?
Comments are an issue I’d have to think about. Would prebuilt libraries for importing/exporting data from/to these languages not handle the multiline strings for me?
What do anchors do in yaml I’ve never heard of them before