Why use JSON instead of YAML for Section definition?

[westonganger]

Is there a reason why we are using JSON instead of YAML for the sections definition? This feels a little jarring, considering YAML is used for everything else.

[westonganger]

I think the reason for JSON is that there is a better abstraction between Arrays and Hashes/Objects. Whereas in YAML it can be hard to differentiate what data type is what.

My main problem with JSON is having to use string keys gets me (ie. "label": "foobar"). Sometimes I accidentally write label: "foobar" and everything blows up and I go down a debugging rabbit hole.

Could we possibly also support quoteless keys in our JSON for simple developer ease. Ex.

{
  name: "Foobar",
  class: "my-class",
  settings: {
    label: "Title",
    id: "title",
    type: "string"
  }
}

This should be totally possible since we are completely in charge of parsing the JSON.

[westonganger]

We can just use HJSON.

https://hjson.org/

JSON Add-Ons:

• Trailing Commas
• Comments (#, //, /* */)
• Quoteless Keys
• Quoteless String (meh but okay why not)
• Write multiline strings with proper whitespace handling.

Thats all it does. Seems like the perfect solution to me.

Heres the ruby gem: https://github.com/hjson/hjson-rb

[westonganger]

Could be just as simple as changing these three load statements methods in steam

https://github.com/locomotivecms/steam/search?q=MultiJson&unscoped_q=MultiJson

[westonganger]

Maybe we could avoid this whole HJSON support if section definitions supported both YAML and JSON

[did]

@westonganger I like your suggestion! let me see if I can add it for v4.

[did]

@westonganger @DonKoko @manuchap @thibaultrey
quick question, if we allow both json and yaml to describe a section, what would the default format be?

[westonganger]

Everything else is YAML so I would say that should be the default.

[DonKoko]

I really got used to the JSON but I agree with @westonganger that YAML would be more consistent with the rest.

[did]

@DonKoko @westonganger next steps:

• modify the section generator in Wagon (YAML by default). This is great because I'm going to put comments in the header! (this is something I was missing before)
• update the documentation about sections (replace JSON examples)

[did]

thanks again @westonganger. YAML is definitively the best choice. So simple to read and write compared to JSON. Besides, thanks to the Liquid HTML ST3 plugin, I've got the perfect code highlighting to read liquid pages.

[DonKoko]

I think its great that we have both options. I have to disagree that YAML is better when it comes to complex data structures, as for a person who never user YAML, its super confusing how do you manage arrays and objects, and with JSON it follows the conventions that we all know and love, arrays with [] and objects with {}. This can make it very confusing to debug, especially considering how dependent it is on indentation. I personally would not use it, but again, i think its a good option to have.

[manuchap]

I'm like 50/50 on this. Maybe 51/49 towards json since js devs and apis use it a lot and it fits well with wagon sync and mongo which I hope will never be replaced with potgresql 😅
(also wish it could be the same with pages headers)
Off subject but I feel the same about haml which should definitely be devs favorite language once they try it for real.
Actually it'd be nice to have the option in wagon to go full json or full yaml 😉