#serde #serialization #format #data-model #parser #object-notation

keon

A human readable object notation that syntactic similar to Rust and fully supports Serde's data model

1 unstable release

new 0.2.0 Jan 20, 2025
0.1.1 Jan 11, 2025
0.1.0 Jan 11, 2025

#691 in Encoding

Download history 218/week @ 2025-01-08 129/week @ 2025-01-15

347 downloads per month

MIT/Apache

84KB
2K SLoC

KEON

KEON is a human readable object notation / serialization format that syntactic similar to Rust and completely supports Serde's data model. For more details, like motivations, please see the repository.

πŸ“ Cheat sheet
Unit ()
Booleans true , false
Numbers 42 , 0x1123 , -1 , 3.14 , inf , NaN
Chars 'A' , '✱' , '\n' , '\u{3000}'
Strings "Hello" , `"raw string ^o^/"`
Bytes b"Hello" , b`"raw bytes ^o^/"` , b64"Sy0tQWV0aGlheA"
Options ? , ? Thing
Tuples (T,) , (T, U, V)
Lists ["abc", "def"]
Maps { 1 => 2, 3 => 4 }
Structs (Struct) { field1: "value1", field2: "value2" }
Variants Enum::Variant , Variant

And the Paragraphs, leave anything after the start sign of each line intact:

As is newline
| #include<iostream>
` using namespace std;
` int main() {
`     cout << "..." << endl;
`     return 0;
` }
Space-joined line
(will trim spaces)
| To be,
| or not to be,
| that is the question.
Joined line
(will trim spaces)
| ζˆ‘θƒ½εžδΈ‹
< ηŽ»η’ƒθ€ŒδΈ
< 伀身体。

The start signs can be mixed, but the first must be the vertical-bar |.

Example

(Save) {                            // <- optional struct name.
    greeting: "Hello world!",
    keybinds: {
        Action::Up => 'W',          // <- optional enum name.
        Action::Down => 'S',
        Action::Left => 'A',
        Action::Right => 'D',
    },
    difficulty_factor: 4.3,
    respawn_point: (                // <- can use parentheses `(` for tuple `)`.
        1107.1487,
        1249.0458,
    ),
    inventory: [
        Item::Water,
        Item::CannedFood,
        Item::IdCard(101),          // <- newtype variant / tuple variant.
        Item::RocketLauncher {
            damage: 250,
            explosion_radius: 60.0,
        },
    ],
}

Our advantages

  • Less syntactic noise, more intuitive look.
  • Allow comments and trailing commas.
  • Write KEON almost like you write Rust:
    • Humanized optional type annotation.
    • Arbitrary type as maps keys.
    • Use braces {} to represent maps and structs (RON doesn't).
    • Distinguishable between tuples and lists (though they're all seq in Serde).
    • ...
  • Supports use Base64, Base32 and Base16 to represent bytes.
  • Provides Paragraph may be helpful when writing something by hand.

Quick usage

use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Debug, Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct MyData {
    msg: String,
    float: f32,
}

fn main() {
    let dat: MyData = keon::from_str(r#"{ msg: "Hello!", float: 1123. }"#).unwrap();

    println!("KEON: {}", keon::to_string(&dat).unwrap());

    println!("Pretty KEON: {}", keon::to_string_pretty(&dat).unwrap());
}

Dependencies

~4.5MB
~52K SLoC