RON is a simple readable data serialization format that looks similar to Rust syntax. It's designed to support all of Serde's data model, so structs, enums, tuples, arrays, generic maps, and primitive values.
```rust GameConfig( // optional struct name windowsize: (800, 600), windowtitle: "PAC-MAN", fullscreen: false,
mouse_sensitivity: 1.4,
key_bindings: {
"up": Up,
"down": Down,
"left": Left,
"right": Right,
// Uncomment to enable WASD controls
/*
"W": Up,
"A": Down,
"S": Left,
"D": Right,
*/
},
difficulty_options: (
start_difficulty: Easy,
adaptive: false,
),
) ```
json
{
"materials": {
"metal": {
"reflectivity": 1.0
},
"plastic": {
"reflectivity": 0.5
}
},
"entities": [
{
"name": "hero",
"material": "metal"
},
{
"name": "monster",
"material": "plastic"
}
]
}
Notice these issues: 1. Struct and maps are the same - random order of exported fields - annoying and inconvenient for reading - doesn't work well with version control - quoted field names - too verbose - no support for enums 2. No trailing comma allowed 3. No comments allowed
rust
Scene( // class name is optional
materials: { // this is a map
"metal": (
reflectivity: 1.0,
),
"plastic": (
reflectivity: 0.5,
),
},
entities: [ // this is an array
(
name: "hero",
material: "metal",
),
(
name: "monster",
material: "plastic",
),
],
)
The new format uses (..) brackets for heterogeneous structures (classes),
while preserving the {..} for maps, and [..] for homogeneous structures (arrays).
This distinction allows us to solve the biggest problem with JSON.
Here are the general rules to parse the heterogeneous structures:
| class is named? | fields are named? | what is it? | example |
| --------------- | ------------------| ------------------------- | ------------------- |
| no | no | tuple | (a, b) |
| yes/no | no | tuple struct | Name(a, b) |
| yes | no | enum value | Variant(a, b) |
| yes/no | yes | struct | (f1: a, f2: b,) |
There is a very basic, work in progress specification available on the wiki page. A more formal and complete grammar is available here.
Why not XML? - too verbose - unclear how to treat attributes vs contents
Why not YAML? - significant white-space - specification is too big
Why not TOML? - alien syntax - absolute paths are not scalable
Why not XXX? - if you know a better format, tell me!
IntelliJ: https://vultix.github.io/intellij-ron-plugin/
VS Code: https://github.com/a5huynh/vscode-ron
Sublime Text: https://packagecontrol.io/packages/RON
Atom: https://atom.io/packages/language-ron
Vim: https://github.com/ron-rs/ron.vim
RON is dual-licensed under Apache-2.0 and MIT.