Comments on: Using JSON for Language-independent Configuration Files

By: El Guapo

El Guapo — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 18:09:16 +0000

To anonymous aka bob,

I disagree. XML is a lot heavier to deal with. Have you ever done parsing in Java for instance? That small amount of PHP is ridiculously simple in comparison.

For many tasks, JSON is an excellent choice of format. Configuration files are one of them.

By: brothercake

brothercake — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:30:50 +0000

Nice pun :D On the flip side, wouldn’t if be funny to have a kid and call him Json :)

But re: INI files – I wasn’t aware there was actually a proscribed format for that; I thought it was just a plain-text file extension convention ..?

By: BartVG

BartVG — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:35:11 +0000

But XML is obviously a better choice.

By: BartVG

BartVG — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:33:41 +0000

How about those good old INI-files? Apart from being a Windows invention (not entirely sure of this, though), their format is also well known and easy to read/parse.

It’s true that Javascript can’t handle them as elegantly as JSON objects, but on the server side, there’s as much parsing needed for JSON objects as there is with INI files. (note: if this last sentence (the part after the last comma) is like a puzzle to you, it’s because I have a slight feeling that there’s something wrong with the word order. Or maybe not.)
I mean, one would expect to be able to do something like json_decode(‘config.js’), which would give you a beautiful associated array immediately, instead of having to read the file, removing possible comments, extracting the part between curly braces and finally calling the current json_decode (which imo does just some extra parsing: you could easily split the contents into an array yourself).
But you can of course always write your own json decoding function that does al this :-)
(I would call it: jason_decode, pun intended)

By: nickg

nickg — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:12:12 +0000

nice idea. though did notice from developer.mozilla.org

const is a Mozilla-specific extension, it is not supported by IE, but has been supported by Opera since version 9.0.

so perhaps


var config = { 
  "lang" : "en",
  "host" : "sitepoint.com"
};

and your regex does not strip /* block style comments */ cheers nick

By: brothercake

brothercake — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:19:34 +0000

But why use a format that *every* language has to parse, when you can use a format that some languages understand natively?

btw – JSON may have originally been a subset of javascript (or python, depending on your point of view), but it’s fast on its way to being an independent specification, with its own RFC and mime-type — http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4627.txt

By: Andy_Read

Andy_Read — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:28:26 +0000

This is a neat hack if you’re a Javascript-centric developer, but beyond that it’s conceptually quite misleading. It’s not a language-independent config file: it’s a JSON config file, which is clearly not language independent – it’s part of the Javascript language. Just because you can get another language like PHP to read and parse a JSON file, doesn’t stop it being Javascript. I could make PHP read a C++ header file, but that wouldn’t make it language-independent, either.

XML is the obvious format designed for language independent use on the web, but good old .ini files are just as language independent – they just require an equal amount of work to read, regardless of which language.

By: bob

bob — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:01:04 +0000

I’d just use XML, its way simpler than having to mess with all this crap.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:00:45 +0000

I’d just use XML, its way simpler than having to mess with all this crap.