TOON

A small starter CPAN-style distribution for a TOON module with a familiar interface inspired by JSON.

Status

This is an intentionally basic implementation. It is suitable as a starting point for further development, but it is not yet a complete or authoritative implementation of any external TOON specification.

Supported syntax

• null
• true / false
• numbers (integer and floating-point, including scientific notation)
• quoted strings with JSON-style escapes (including \uXXXX unicode escapes)
• arrays: [1, 2, 3]
• objects: {name: "Dave", count: 3}
• bareword object keys matching [A-Za-z_][A-Za-z0-9_-]*; other keys must be quoted
• tabular sections: name[count]{field1,field2,...}: followed by CSV rows

Example

use TOON qw(encode_toon decode_toon);
# Aliases: to_toon / from_toon are also available

my $text = encode_toon({
  name   => 'Dave',
  active => 1,
  tags   => ['perl', 'toon'],
}, canonical => 1);

my $data = decode_toon($text);

Tabular syntax

Top-level hashes whose values are arrays of uniform hashes are automatically encoded in the compact tabular format:

users[2]{id,name,role}:
  1,Alice,admin
  2,Bob,user

This format is also accepted on decode.

OO interface

use TOON;

my $toon = TOON->new->pretty->canonical;
my $text = $toon->encode({ answer => 42 });
my $data = $toon->decode($text);