Rusty Object Notation

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.

Example

```rust,ignore 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,
),

) ```

Why RON?

Example in JSON

json { "materials": { "metal": { "reflectivity": 1.0 }, "plastic": { "reflectivity": 0.5 } }, "entities": [ { "name": "hero", "material": "metal" }, { "name": "monster", "material": "plastic" } ] }

Same example in RON

rust,ignore 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", ), ], )

Note the following advantages of RON over JSON:

• trailing commas allowed
• single- and multi-line comments
• field names aren't quoted, so it's less verbose
• optional struct names improve readability
• enums are supported (and less verbose than their JSON representation)

RON syntax overview

• Numbers: 42, 3.14, 0xFF, 0b0110
• Strings: "Hello", "with\\escapes\n", r#"raw string, great for regex\."#
• Booleans: true, false
• Chars: 'e', '\n'
• Optionals: Some("string"), Some(Some(1.34)), None
• Tuples: ("abc", 1.23, true), ()
• Lists: ["abc", "def"]
• Structs: ( foo: 1.0, bar: ( baz: "I'm nested" ) )
• Maps: { "arbitrary": "keys", "are": "allowed" }

Note: Serde's data model represents fixed-size Rust arrays as tuple (instead of as list)

Quickstart

Cargo.toml

toml [dependencies] ron = "0.8" serde = { version = "1", features = ["derive"] }

main.rs

```rust use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

[derive(Debug, Deserialize, Serialize)]

struct MyStruct { boolean: bool, float: f32, }

fn main() { let x: MyStruct = ron::from_str("(boolean: true, float: 1.23)").unwrap();

println!("RON: {}", ron::to_string(&x).unwrap());

} ```

Tooling

| Editor | Plugin | | ------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------- | | IntelliJ | intellij-ron | | VS Code | a5huynh/vscode-ron | | Sublime Text | RON | | Atom | language-ron | | Vim | ron-rs/ron.vim | | EMACS | [emacs-ron] |

Specification

There is a very basic, work in progress specification available on the wiki page. A more formal and complete grammar is available here.

License

RON is dual-licensed under Apache-2.0 and MIT.

Any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work must be provided under the same dual-license terms.