Not-so-fun fact: if you’re transferring a yaml or toml file and the transfer is incomplete, the receiving app may not even know! Yaml and toml both have a good chance of being apparently valid when cut off randomly. This doesn’t impact JSON because of the enclosing {} or [].
TOML is intended for configuration, not for data serialization, so you shouldn’t be sending it over the wire in all too crazy ways anyways.
Most protocols will have a built-in way of knowing when the whole content has been transferred, typically by putting a content length into the header.
Having to wait until the closing } or ] can also be a disadvantage of JSON, since you cannot stream it, i.e. start processing the fields/elements before the whole thing has arrived. (You probably still don’t want to use TOML for that, though. JSONL, CSV or such are a better idea.)
I’m only being pedantic. Toml is not bad. Yaml I personally don’t like because I don’t approve of semantically required whitespace but I know I’m in the minority there.
It’s not the norm in smaller companies, but big companies can use config servers where an app will retrieve its config on startup over the network. To be fair, I think they fall back to a platform specific encoding though.
Better hope it’s built in. I don’t remember the last time I verified a Content-Length was accurate. Also this generally applies to networking; disk writes don’t get this same verification especially if a process is killed mid-write.
True point, no real notes. I’ve recently been dealing with streaming JSON for AI, it’s SOO verbose for the few tokens that come across in each message. I don’t know how gRPC wasn’t chosen, or at least made an option, but oh well.
You make good, valid points and I know I’m talking about edge cases that require the stars to align to break. It reminds me of an old, not-quite-relevant-but-oh-well saying “a ‘one in a million’ chance at 1GHz happens every millisecond.” The law of large numbers isn’t always on our side.
Not-so-fun fact: if you’re transferring a yaml or toml file and the transfer is incomplete, the receiving app may not even know! Yaml and toml both have a good chance of being apparently valid when cut off randomly. This doesn’t impact JSON because of the enclosing {} or [].
Counterpoints:
}or]can also be a disadvantage of JSON, since you cannot stream it, i.e. start processing the fields/elements before the whole thing has arrived. (You probably still don’t want to use TOML for that, though. JSONL, CSV or such are a better idea.)I’m only being pedantic. Toml is not bad. Yaml I personally don’t like because I don’t approve of semantically required whitespace but I know I’m in the minority there.
You make good, valid points and I know I’m talking about edge cases that require the stars to align to break. It reminds me of an old, not-quite-relevant-but-oh-well saying “a ‘one in a million’ chance at 1GHz happens every millisecond.” The law of large numbers isn’t always on our side.