ron 0.6.6

Rusty Object Notation
Documentation 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157

# Rusty Object Notation


[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/ron-rs/ron.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/ron-rs/ron)
[![Crates.io](https://img.shields.io/crates/v/ron.svg)](https://crates.io/crates/ron)
[![Docs](https://docs.rs/ron/badge.svg)](https://docs.rs/ron)
[![Gitter](https://badges.gitter.im/ron-rs/ron.svg)](https://gitter.im/ron-rs/ron)

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](https://serde.rs/data-model.html), so
structs, enums, tuples, arrays, generic maps, and primitive values.

## Example


```rust
GameConfig( // optional struct name
    window_size: (800, 600),
    window_title: "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"
        }
   ]
}
```

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

### Same example in RON


```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,)`   |

### Specification


There is a very basic, work in progress specification available on
[the wiki page](https://github.com/ron-rs/ron/wiki/Specification).
A more formal and complete grammar is available [here](docs/grammar.md).

### Appendix


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!

## Tooling


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

## License


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