Why use YAML instead of JSON?

Introduction

The YAML is an open-source language used for writing configuration files on your system, what makes the YAML language different from other computer languages is that it is human-readable, unlike other programming languages which makes it easier to work with....

What is YAML?

The full form of the YAML language can be different depending on whom you are asking it, mostly there are two full forms of this language and both of them are considered to be correct, the first one is yet another markup language while the other full form is YAML ain’t markup language. if you read the second full form of YAML, you will understand that the YAML is not a markup language which means that this language is used for data and not documents....

XML VS JSON VS YAML – What’s The Difference?

All the above three languages are very popular data serialization languages used in the today’s industry for computer science and IT development, but which among them is better? and what is exactly the difference between each of them? for answering these questions we will have to take a look at the difference between these languages....

What Type of Language is YAML?

Now let’s come back to our main question, what type of language is YAML? the YAML inherits the “ML” from the HTML and SGML languages which are known to be markup languages but the YAML itself is not a markup language because it is a unicode based data serialization language....

Features and basic rules of YAML:

There are some basic rules that you must follow whenever you are writing the YAML, those rules are the following:...

How to create a YAML file?

It is very easy and simple to create a YAML file, there are mainly three ways to create a YAML file if you want, let’s see what those ways are and also understand each method one by one....

Multi-document support in YAML:

YAML itself doesn’t inherently support multi-document structures like JSON arrays or objects. YAML is primarily designed to represent a single data structure. However, there is a way to handle multiple documents within a single YAML file using the — document separator....

Indentation in YAML:

YAML uses the indentation in order to indicate both the structure as well as the hierarchy of the data. the recommended indentation for the YAML language files is simply two spaces per level but apart from that YAML can also follow any of the indentation which the individual file uses....

Tabs in YAML:

The YAML language does not allow the using of the TAB button because of indentation issues. You can however use any amount of spaces and combination of space instead of using the tabs in the YAML language....

Whitespace in YAML:

YAML is a language that is known to be whitespace-sensitive which means that while indentation defines the structure. however it does not accept any tabs as we discovered earlier for the indentation. so that means that the empty lines are ignored and comments are written using octothorpe #....

Why use YAML instead of JSON?

Many people also ask the question, that why should we use the YAML instead of using JSON, one of the most easiest and simplest way to answer this is because the syntax of YAML is very easy to read, understand and write as compared to JSON, which makes it very easy to write and understand not only for the developers but also the other non-developer members of the team....

Explicit data types in YAML:

In the YAML language, custom data types are allowed but the YAML language is known to natively encode the scalars, if you are wondering what scalars are then simply know that strings, float values, strings are known to be scalars....

Conclusion

In conclusion, we learnt that the YAML language is a data serialization language and not a markup language, apart from that we also looked at why we should use the YAML language instead of using JSON language as well. you can use the YAML language if you want to write simple-to-understand codes for your configuration files....