Please don’t. If you need something like json but with comments, then use YAML or TOML. Those formats are designed to be human-readable by default, json is better suited for interchanging information between different pieces of software. And if you really need comments inside JSON, then find a parser that supports // or /* */ syntax.
Yes, it’s a field. Specifically, a field containing human-readable information about what is going on in adjacent fields, much like a comment. I see no issue with putting such information in a json file.
As for “you don’t comment by putting information in variables”: In Python, your objects have the __doc__ attribute, which is specifically used for this purpose.
IMHO: XML is a file format, JSON is a data transfer format. Reinventing things like RSS or SVG to use JSON wouldn’t be helpful, but using XML to communicate between your app’s frontend and backend wouldn’t be either.
The amount of
config.jsons I’ve had to mess with…
Yeah, json is not a good config format. As much as xml is not. Please use something like YAML or TOML.
Of course you can use XML that way, but it is unnecessarily verbose and complex because you have to make decisions, like, whether to store things as attributes or as nested elements.
I stand by my statement that if you’re saving things to a file you should probably use XML, if you’re transferring data over a network you should probably use JSON.
People may hate on SOAP but I’ve never had issues with setting up a SOAP client
I came into the industry right when XML fever had peaked as was beginning to fall back. But in MS land, it never really went away, just being slowly cannibalize by JSON.
You’re right though, there was some cool stuff being done with xml when it was assumed that it would be the future of all data formats. Being able to apply standard tools like XLT transforms, XSS styling, schemas to validate, and XPath to search/query and you had some very powerful generic tools.
JSON has barely caught up to that with schemes and transforms. JQ lets you query json but I don’t really find it more readable or usable than XPath. I’m sure something like XLT exists, but there’s no standardization or attempt to rally around shared tools like with XML.
That to me is the saddest thing. VC/MBA-backed companies have driven everyone into the worst cases of NIHS ever. Now there’s no standards, no attempts to share work or unify around reliable technology. Its every company for themselves and getting other people suckered into using (and freely maintaining) your tools as a prelude to locking them into your ecosystem is the norm now.
And there are some truly magic tools.
XSDs are far from perfect, but waaay more powerful than json schema.
XSLT has its problems, but completely transforming a document to a completely different structure with just a bit of text is awesome. I had to rewrite a relatively simple XSLT in Java and it was something like 10 times more lines.
There’s comments in the specs and a bunch of parsers that actually inore //
On one hand I agree, on the other hand I just know that some people would immediately abuse it and put relevant data into comments.
This is why there are none, but I still think it’s dumb. Parsers can’t see comments anyways.
OH HEY EVERYONE, EVERYONE, THIS GUY LIKES JSON
Fuck you and your unstructured garbage.
It is very cool, specifically as a human readable mark down / data format.
The fact that you can make anything a tag and it’s going to be valid and you can nest stuff, is amazing.
But with a niche use case.
Clearly the tags waste space if you’re actually saving them all the time.
Good format to compress though…
I disagree, with a passion.
It is soooo cluttered, so much useless redundant tags everywhere. Just give JSON or YAML or anything really but XML…
But to each their own i guess.
YAML for human-written files, JSON for back-to-front and protobuf for back-to-back. XML is an abomination.
Having an easy on the eyes markdown that is also easy to parse would be cool.
But YAML does these things:
https://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2023/01/11/the-yaml-document-from-hell
which are not excusable, for any reason.
I think we did a thread about XML before, but I have more questions. What exactly do you mean by “anything can be a tag”?
It seems to me that this:
<address>
<street_address>21 2nd Street</street_address>
<city>New York</city>
<state>NY</state>
<postal_code>10021-3100</postal_code>
</address>
Is pretty much the same as this:
"address": {
"street_address": "21 2nd Street",
"city": "New York",
"state": "NY",
"postal_code": "10021-3100"
},
If it branches really quickly the XML style is easier to mentally scope than brackets, though, I’ll give it that.
Since XML can have attributes and children, it’s not as easy to convert to JSON.
Your JSON example is more akin to:
<address street_address="21 2nd Street" city="New York" ...></address>
Hmm, so in tree terms, each node has two distinct types of children, only one of which can have their own children. That sounds more ambiguity-introducing than helpful to me, but that’s just a matter of taste. Can you do lists in XML as well?
I’m not sure now that I think about it, but I find this more explicit and somehow more free than json. Which can’t be true, since you can just
{"anything you want":{...}}
But still, this:
<my_custom_tag>
<this>
<that>
<roflmao>
...
is all valid.
You can more closely approximate the logical structure of whatever you’re doing without leaving the internal logic of the… syntax?
<car>
<tyre> air, <valve>closed</valve> </tyre>
<tyre> air, <valve>closed</valve> </tyre>
<tyre> <valve>open</valve> </tyre>
<tyre> air, <valve>closed</valve> </tyre>
</car>
Maybe I just like the idea of a closing tag being very specific about what it is that is being closed (?). I guess I’m really not sure, but it does feel nicer to my brain to have starting and closing tags and distinguishing between what is structure, what is data, what is inside where.
My peeve with json is that… it doesn’t properly distinguish between strings that happen to be a number and “numbers” resulting in:
myinput = {"1":"Hello",1:"Hello"}
tempjson = json.dumps(myinput)
output = json.loads(tempjson)
print(output)
>>>{'1': 'Hello'}
in python.
I actually don’t like the attributes in xml, I think it would be better if it was mandatory that they were also just more tagged elements inside the others, and that the “validity” of a piece of xml being a certain object would depend entirely on parsing correctly or not.
I particularly hate the idea of attributes in svg, and even more particularly the way they defined paths.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/SVG/Tutorial/Paths#curve_commands
It works, but I consider that truly ugly. And also I don’t understand because it would have been trivial to do something like this:
<path><element>data</element><element>data</element></path>
Maybe I just like the idea of a closing tag being very specific about what it is that is being closed (?).
That’s kind of what I was getting at with the mental scoping.
My peeve with json is that… it doesn’t properly distinguish between strings that happen to be a number and “numbers"
Is that implementation-specific, or did they bake JavaScript type awfulness into the standard? Or are numbers even supported - it’s all binary at the machine level, so I could see an argument that every (tree) node value should be a string, and actual types should be left to higher levels of abstraction.
I actually don’t like the attributes in xml, I think it would be better if it was mandatory that they were also just more tagged elements inside the others, and that the “validity” of a piece of xml being a certain object would depend entirely on parsing correctly or not.
I particularly hate the idea of attributes in svg, and even more particularly the way they defined paths.
I agree. The latter isn’t even a matter of taste, they’re just implementing their own homebrew syntax inside an attribute, circumventing the actual format, WTF.
Balisage Paper: Fat Markup: Trimming the Fat Markup Myth one calorie at a time
https://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol10/html/Lee01/BalisageVol10-Lee01.html
XML is a fine format in comparison to JSON.
I hate writing and reading xml compared to json, I don’t really care if one is slightly leaner than the other. If your concern is the size or speed you should probably be rethinking how you serialize the data anyway (orotobuff/DB)
I mean we have a generation that thinks XML is bloated & JSON is superior but those two formats are about the same on performance & compressed size–which was the point. The non-plaintext-readable formats are superior along a lot of metrics but harder to debug & ultimately less common.
A word document is xml
Lots or file formats are just zipped XML.
I was reverse engineering fucking around with the LBX file format for our Brother label printer’s software at work, because I wanted to generate labels programmatically, and they’re zipped XML too. Terrible format, LBX, really annoying to work with. The parser in Brother P-Touch Editor is really picky too. A string is 1 character longer or shorter than the length you defined in an attribute earlier in the XML? “I’ve never seen this file format in my life,” says P-Touch Editor.
Sounds like it’s actually using XSLT or some kind of content validation. Which to be honest sounds like a good practice.