!icon

!noon

$3

is an object notation with a focus on human readability.

Whitespace is preferred over other control characters:

- Indentation is used to express hierarchy
- Strings don't need to be escaped
- works well in config files
- works well in command line arguments
- good for storing regexp patterns

$3

* package
* language
* urtil
* font
* menu

$3

#### hierarchy

is expressed by indentation with spaces

``
grandpa
parent
child
sibling
uncle
`

#### dictionaries

two or more spaces mark the end of a dictionary key, therefore ...
keys and list items can have single spaces in them but ...
unescaped dictionary keys can't contain consecutive spaces:

`
key 1 value 1
key 2 value 2 contains spaces
`

#### one key makes an object

`
this is
an object
`

the above as json: {"this is": null, "an": "object"}
while

`
this is
not an object
`

is equivalent to ["this is", "not an object"]

#### objects inside lists

are expressed like this:
`
.
a 1
.
b 2
`
the above as json: [{"a": 1}, {"b": 2}]

$3

#### escaping

if trimming your strings is not an option, you can escape:

`
a | leading spaces
b trailing spaces |
c | leading and trailing spaces |
pipe symbol |||
empty string ||
`

keys must be escaped from both ends:

`
| s pace | key keeps spaces
| | key consists of spaces
|| key is empty string
`

#### multiline strings

`
key ...
value is
a text with
line breaks
which stops
now
...
`

#### comments

`coffeescript


comments start with the hash sign

mixing of data and comments is not allowed

therefore:
1 # this is not a comment
| # neither is this one
# but this one is
`

$3

sometimes data needs to be encoded in a single line.

#### dense notation

`
key . a .. b . c
`

is equivalent to

`
key
a
b
c
`

#### one line notation

:: represents a line break
no spaces in keys allowed, therefore ...
no two-space-seperation necessary:

`
key . a :: b . c :: d 1 :: e 2
`

is equivalent to

`
key
a
b
c
d 1
e 2
`

$3

!cli

$3

`coffeescript
noon = require 'noon'

usage is similar to JSON

noon.stringify { hello: 'world' }

hello world

noon.parse """
hello world
what's up? ☺
"""

{ hello: 'world', 'what\'s up?': '☺' }

stringify_options = # stringify's second argument, defaults are:
ext: 'noon' # output format: noon or json
indent: 4 # number of spaces per indent level
align: true # vertically align object values
maxalign: 32 # maximal number of spaces when aligning
sort: false # sort object keys alphabetically
circular: false # check for circular references (expensive!)
colors: false # colorize output with ansi colors

`

`coffeescript

load data from file

data = noon.load 'file.noon'
data = noon.load 'file.json'

write data to file

noon.save 'file.noon', data

noon.save 'file.noon', data, stringify_options
noon.save 'file.json', data # < write as json
noon.save 'noext', data, ext: 'noon'

``

$3

- keys can't start with the pipe symbol: |
- escaped keys can't contain the pipe symbol
- empty objects are not expressible

Don't use it if you can't live with the limitations mentioned above.

[![npm package][npm-image]][npm-url]
[![Build Status][travis-image]][travis-url]
[![downloads][downloads-image]][downloads-url]

[npm-image]:https://img.shields.io/npm/v/noon.svg
[npm-url]:http://npmjs.org/package/noon
[travis-image]:https://travis-ci.org/monsterkodi/noon.svg?branch=master
[travis-url]:https://travis-ci.org/monsterkodi/noon
[downloads-image]:https://img.shields.io/npm/dm/noon.svg
[downloads-url]:https://www.npmtrends.com/noon