📦 toonkit

Typed Object Oriented Notation (TOON) parser & serializer for frontend and backend JavaScript applications.

🚀 Lightweight • Type-safe • Human-readable • API-friendly

🌐 Docs: https://toonkit.manojgowda.in 💻 GitHub: https://github.com/ManojGowda89/toonkit

✨ Why toonkit?

JSON is powerful but verbose.

TOON provides:

✅ smaller payloads ✅ human-readable format ✅ schema with types ✅ multi-resource support ✅ frontend ⇄ backend symmetry ✅ perfect for APIs, bots & automation

🧠 What is TOON?

TOON = Typed Object Oriented Notation

It combines:

✔ schema ✔ data ✔ types ✔ compact structure

🧾 Example TOON

meta{page:n,limit:n,total:n}:
1,10,200

employees[2]{id:n,name:s,salary:n,active:b}:
1,Riya,90000,true
2,John,80000,false

departments[1]{id:s,title:s}:
10,Engineering

🔄 Parsed JSON Output

{
  meta: { page: 1, limit: 10, total: 200 },

  employees: [
    { id: 1, name: "Riya", salary: 90000, active: true },
    { id: 2, name: "John", salary: 80000, active: false }
  ],

  departments: {
    id: "10",
    title: "Engineering"
  }
}

🧬 Supported Data Types

| Code | Type | Example | | ---- | ----------- | ------- | | n | number | 25 | | s | string | Manoj | | b | boolean | true | | nl | null | null | | j | JSON object | {"a":1} | | a | array | [1,2,3] |

Example With All Types

sample{age:n,name:s,active:b,data:j,tags:a,value:nl}:
25,Manoj,true,{"x":1},["a","b"],null

📥 Installation

npm install toonkit

🧩 Importing toonkit

CommonJS

const { sendToon, receiveToon, reqGetToon, resSendToon } = require("toonkit");

ES Modules

import { sendToon, receiveToon, reqGetToon, resSendToon } from "toonkit";

🌐 Frontend Usage

✅ Convert JSON → TOON

import { sendToon } from "toonkit";

const payload = sendToon({
  employees: [
    { id: 1, name: "Riya", salary: 90000, active: true },
    { id: 2, name: "John", salary: 80000, active: false }
  ]
});

✅ Send to API

await fetch("/api", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: { "Content-Type": "text/plain" },
  body: payload
});

✅ Convert TOON → JSON

import { receiveToon } from "toonkit";

const text = await res.text();
const data = receiveToon(text);

🖥 Backend Usage (Express)

Setup

const express = require("express");
const { reqGetToon, resSendToon } = require("toonkit");

const app = express();
app.use(express.text());

Parse & Respond

app.post("/api", (req, res) => {

  const data = reqGetToon(req);

  console.log(data);

  resSendToon(res, data);
});

🧪 Using toonkit in Postman

Step 1: Method

POST

Step 2: Headers

Content-Type: text/plain

Step 3: Body → raw → Text

employees[2]{id:n,name:s,salary:n}:
1,Riya,90000
2,John,80000

Step 4: Send

📊 Pagination Example

sendToon({
  meta: { page: 1, limit: 10, total: 200 },
  employees: [...]
});

📦 Multiple Collections Support

sendToon({
  users: [...],
  products: [...],
  orders: [...]
});

Perfect for single API responses.

⚠️ Important Notes

✔ Enable Express text parser:

app.use(express.text());

✔ Use correct header:

Content-Type: text/plain

✔ Schema must match values.

⚡ Performance Advantage

Compared to JSON:

✔ smaller payload ✔ faster parsing ✔ human readable ✔ API efficient

🧠 When to Use toonkit

✅ APIs returning multiple resources ✅ bots & automation ✅ low bandwidth systems ✅ Chrome extensions ✅ microservices ✅ admin tools ✅ data pipelines

👨‍💻 Developer

Manoj Gowda 🌐 https://manojgowda.in

💬 Developer Note

Curious to explore new ideas and build tools that make development easier.

toonkit is created to:

✔ save time for developers ✔ simplify data exchange ✔ provide a single function flow for JavaScript lovers ✔ encourage contributions & innovation

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome!

If you want to improve toonkit, open a PR or share ideas.

Let’s make data exchange simpler together 🚀

📚 Documentation

Full documentation available at:

👉 https://toonkit.manojgowda.in

💻 Source Code

GitHub Repository:

👉 https://github.com/ManojGowda89/toonkit

📄 License

MIT

⭐ If you like toonkit

Give it a star ⭐ and share with developers!