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Show HN: I made Confetti: a configuration language file format

(confetti.hgs3.me)
67 points hgs3 | 6 comments | 31 Mar 25 12:34 UTC | HN request time: 0.229s | source | bottom

Hello everyone, I created Confetti: a simple, typeless, and localization-friendly configuration language designed for human-editable configuration files.

In my opinion, JSON works well for data interchange, but it's overused for configuration, it's not localization-friendly, and it's too syntactically noisy. INI is simple but lacks hierarchical structures and doesn't have a formal specification. Confetti is intended to bridge the gap.

I aim to keep Confetti simple and minimalistic, while encouraging others to extend it. Think of it like Markdown for configuration files: there's a core specification, but your welcome to create your own variations that suit your needs.

1. IshKebab ◴[02 Apr 25 09:33 UTC] No.43554999[source]▶
> Confetti does not compete with JSON or XML, it competes with INI.

It clearly competes with JSON.

I think I would still much rather use JSON5 over this. It's quite similar in terms of structure and terseness, but I don't have to learn anything.

    // This is a comment.
    {
        probe_device: ["eth0", "eth1"],
        users: [
            {
                user: "*",
                login: "anonymous",
                password: "${ENV:ANONPASS}",
                machine: "167.89.14.1",
                proxy: {
                    try_ports: [582, 583, 584],
                },
            },
            {
                user: "Joe Williams",
                login: "joe",
                machine "167.89.14.1",
            },
        ],
    }
Still, it seems fairly well designed and elegant. Way better than YAML or TOML for example. Typeless seems like a bad decision in some ways but I can see the advantages.

Top marks on the name!

replies(3): >>43555025 #>>43556049 #>>43556229 #
2. fragmede ◴[02 Apr 25 09:38 UTC] No.43555025[source]▶
JSON with comments and trailing commas is all I want.

Call it j5on

replies(2): >>43555060 #>>43555068 #
3. mattvr ◴[02 Apr 25 09:43 UTC] No.43555060[source]▶
This exists: jsonc – and it's somewhat widely used, such as for VS Code configuration.
4. IshKebab ◴[02 Apr 25 09:45 UTC] No.43555068[source]▶
That's JSONC. But JSON5 adds some more nice stuff without being overkill IMO.

https://json5.org/

5. mort96 ◴[02 Apr 25 12:47 UTC] No.43556049[source]▶
The JSON-style "everything is one big tree" type of config file is really hard to split up into multiple files. The "Confetti" style "every thing you want to configure is its own unit" makes it natural to split up files by adding an include directive or rules like "all files in config.d will be read".
6. eviks ◴[02 Apr 25 13:05 UTC] No.43556229[source]▶
Market quote, commas, and colons aren't that terse, and it seems too simple to have to learn much of anything