About the Library

Project Goal

First, what are not the goals:

• This is not a parser, there are good implementations already. I recommend colinodell/json5.

• This project for now does not allow modifications of existing configs. JSON5 files, like YAML and TOML, must be written by a human, so any automated tool must also preserve all custom formatting when possible. I want to solve a smaller problem for now.

The main goal of this project is to create a tool that allows developers to generate a pretty initial config for their users. A side goal is so this tool can also be used to prettify existing JSON configs.

JSON5

Note

https://json5.org

JSON5 is a file format best suited for human readable and maintainable configs. It is a superset of JSON and builds on its strengths, adding several useful features:

• A superset of JSON (like YAML[1])

• A superset of JSONC (non-intended but useful feature)

• A subset of JavaScript ES5.1

• Formal spec (unlike JSONC)

• Relatively easy to parse

• Supports comments (the must-have)

• Unquoted keys that declutter config a lot visually

• Trailing commas

• Multiline strings

[1]

A feature not supported by symfony/yaml by the way.

JSONC

Note

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/json#_json-with-comments

JSONC or JSON with Comments is just it, a JSON that allows comment blocks. It is not a well-defined standard but it is widely used so it was implemented here too.