SafeYAML

SafeYAML is an aggressively small subset of YAML. It's everything you need for human-readable-and-writable configuration files, and nothing more.

You don't need to integrate a new parser library: keep using your language's best-maintained YAML parser, and drop the safeyaml linter into your CI pipeline, pre-commit hook and/or text editor. It's a standalone script, so you don't have any new dependencies to worry about.

What's allowed?

It's best described as JSON plus the following:

• You can use indentation for structure (braces are optional)
• Keys can be unquoted (foo: 1, rather than "foo": 1), or quoted with '' instead
• Single-line comments with #
• Trailing commas allowed within [] or {}

More details are in the specification safeyaml.md

Here's an example:

title: "SafeYAML Example"

database:
  server: "192.168.1.1"

  ports:
    - 8000
    - 8001
    - 8002

  enabled: true

servers:
  # JSON-style objects
  alpha: {
    "ip": "10.0.0.1",
    "names": [
      "alpha",
      "alpha.server",
    ],
  }
  beta: {
    "ip": "10.0.0.2",
    "names": ["beta"],
  }

As for what's disallowed: a lot. String values must always be quoted. Boolean values must be written as true or false (yes, Y, y, on etc are not allowed). Indented blocks must start on their own line.

No anchors, no references. No multi-line strings. No multi-document streams. No custom tagged values. No Octal, or Hexadecimal. No sexagesimal numbers.

Why?

The prevalence of YAML as a configuration format is testament to the unfriendliness of JSON, but the YAML language is terrifyingly huge and full of pitfalls for people just trying to write configuration (the number of ways to write a Boolean value is a prime example).

There have been plenty of attempts to define other configuration languages (TOML, Hugo, HJSON, etc). Subjectively, most of them are less friendly than YAML (.ini-style formats quickly become cumbersome for structures with two or more levels of nesting). Objectively, all of them face the uphill struggle of needing a parser to be written and maintained in every popular programming language.

A language which is a subset of YAML, however, needs no new parser - just a linter to ensure that files conform. The safeyaml linter is an independent executable, so whatever language and tooling you're currently using, you can continue to use it - it's just one more step in your code quality process.

How do I use it?

The safeyaml executable will validate your YAML code, or fail with an error if it can't. Here's an example of a passing validation:

$ cat input.yaml
title: "My YAML file"

$ safeyaml input.yaml
title: "My YAML file"

Here's an example of an error:

$ cat input.yaml
command: yes

$ safeyaml input.yaml
input.yaml:1:11:Can't use 'yes' as a value. Please either surround it in quotes
if it's a string, or replace it with `true` if it's a boolean.

With the --fix option, safeyaml can automatically repair some problems within YAML files.

Here's an example file that has some problems:

$ cat input.yaml 
name: sonic the hedgehog      # Unquoted string
settings:{a:1,b:2}            # Missing ' ' after ':'
list:
- "item"                      # Unindented list item

$ safeyaml --fix input.yaml
name: "sonic the hedgehog"
settings: {a: 1,b: 2}
list:
  - "item"

To rewrite the fixed YAML back to the input files, pass the --in-place flag:

$ safeyaml --fix --in-place input.yaml

You can turn individual "fix" rules off and on:

--fix-unquoted will put quotes around unquoted strings inside an indented map. This does not affect map keys (which must still be in identifier format, i.e a1.b2.c2).

--fix-nospace ensures that at least one space follows the : after every key.

--fix-nodent ensures list items inside maps are further indented than their parent key.

There are also some more forceful options which aren't included in --fix:

--force-string-keys turns every key into a string. This will replace any key that has a boolean or null ('true' etc) with the string version (i.e "true").

--force-commas ensures every non-empty list or map has a trailing comma.

Other Arguments

--json output JSON instead of YAML.

--quiet don't output YAML on success.

How do I generate it?

Don't. Generating YAML is almost always a bad idea. Generate JSON if you need to serialize data.