🎯 TOON Config

A modern configuration engine using Token-Oriented Object Notation (TOON) — a clean, type-safe alternative to YAML and JSON.

Why TOON?

• ✅ Type-safe tokens with built-in validation
• ✅ Better error messages than YAML/JSON
• ✅ Human-readable syntax
• ✅ Zero dependencies
• ✅ Comments support using ##
• ✅ Bidirectional — parse TOON or generate it from JS objects

Installation

npm install toon-config

Bonus: VS Code syntax highlighting is automatically installed! Just reload VS Code after installation.

Quick Start

1. Create a .toon config file

## config.toon
OBJ(
   STR(appName, "Polystudi"),
   BOOL(debug, true),
   INT(port, 3001),
   LIST(modules, "auth", "api", "db"),
   OBJ(database,
      STR(host, "localhost"),
      INT(port, 27017),
      STR(user, "admin")
   )
)

2. Load it in your app

import { loadConfig } from 'toon-config';

const config = await loadConfig('./config.toon');

console.log(config.appName);  // "Polystudi"
console.log(config.port);     // 3001
console.log(config.database.host);  // "localhost"

API Reference

loadConfig(filePath)

Asynchronously load and parse a .toon file.

const config = await loadConfig('./config.toon');

loadConfigSync(filePath)

Synchronously load and parse a .toon file.

import { loadConfigSync } from 'toon-config';
const config = loadConfigSync('./config.toon');

parseString(toonString)

Parse a TOON string directly.

import { parseString } from 'toon-config';

const config = parseString(`
OBJ(
   STR(name, "MyApp"),
   INT(port, 3000)
)
`);

stringifyTOON(object, indent)

Convert a JavaScript object to TOON format.

import { stringifyTOON } from 'toon-config';

const toonString = stringifyTOON({
  appName: "Web3 Notes",
  debug: false,
  port: 8080
});

console.log(toonString);

Output:

OBJ(
   STR(appName, "Web3 Notes"),
   BOOL(debug, false),
   INT(port, 8080)
)

TOON Syntax

Supported Tokens

| Token | Type | Example | |-------|------|---------| | STR | String | STR(name, "value") | | INT | Integer | INT(count, 42) | | FLOAT | Float | FLOAT(price, 19.99) | | BOOL | Boolean | BOOL(enabled, true) | | LIST | Array | LIST("a", "b", "c") | | OBJ | Object | OBJ(STR(key, "val")) |

Comments

Use ## for single-line comments:

## This is a comment
OBJ(
   STR(name, "test")  ## inline comment
)

Nested Objects

OBJ(
   STR(appName, "MyApp"),
   OBJ(database,
      STR(host, "localhost"),
      INT(port, 5432),
      OBJ(credentials,
         STR(user, "admin"),
         STR(password, "secret")
      )
   )
)

Lists

LIST("auth", "api", "db")
LIST(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
LIST(true, false, true)

Type Safety

TOON validates types at parse time:

// ❌ This will throw an error
parseString('INT(value, true)');
// Error: Type mismatch: expected Integer token, got boolean

// ✅ This works
parseString('INT(value, 42)');

Error Messages

TOON provides clear, actionable error messages:

Type mismatch: expected Integer token, got boolean at line 3, column 15

Unterminated string at line 5, column 8

Testing

Run the test suite:

npm test

Use Cases

• Application configuration files
• Environment-specific settings
• API endpoint definitions
• Feature flags
• Database connection configs
• Build tool configurations

Comparison

| Feature | TOON | JSON | YAML | |---------|------|------|------| | Type-safe | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | | Comments | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | | Human-readable | ✅ | ⚠️ | ✅ | | Clear errors | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | | Bidirectional | ✅ | ✅ | ⚠️ |

VS Code Extension

TOON Config comes with a VS Code extension for syntax highlighting!

Auto-install: The extension is automatically installed when you run npm install toon-config

Manual install: Search for "TOON Config Language" in VS Code Extensions, or:

code --install-extension atharva-baodhankar.toon-vscode

Features:

• 🎨 Syntax highlighting for .toon files
• 💬 Comment support with ##
• 🔧 Auto-closing brackets and quotes
• 📝 Smart indentation

Repository

GitHub: atharvabaodhankar/toon-config

License

MIT

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please open an issue or PR on GitHub.

Author

Created by @op_athu_17

Made with ❤️ for better config management