Compact Object Notation

One of the common usages of YAML is a human-readable format to encode Java objects. Standard JavaBeans are supported but this approach requires an empty constructor to create an instance. SnakeYAML provides a special mark-up to encode object in a compact form:

package.Name(argument1, property1=value1, property2=value2)

1. Everything before '(' is a prefix (by default is serves as a full class Name, but it can be changed)
2. ')' must be the last character of the scalar
3. ',' splits the content between brackets into tokens
4. When a token does not have '=' then it is considered as a parameter for a constructor to create an instance
5. When a token has '=' then it is considered as a JavaBean property
6. Tokens may not contain ',' or '='
7. Tokens are trimmed so these two are identical:

   package.Name ( argument1 , property1 = value1 , property2 = value2 )
   

   package.Name(argument1,property1=value1,property2=value2)
   

8. implicit types do not work for tokens, all the values are always Strings

It gives a very powerful way to create object with just one line of YAML:

org.package.Container(id123)

org.package.Container(name=parent, title=A title)

org.package.Container(id123, name=parent, title=A title)

Mapping

Scalar may be combined with mapping:

org.package.Container(id123):
  name: parent
  title: More text

org.package.Container(id123, name=parent):
  title: A bit more text which can be very long
  number: 17
  description: |-
    many more lines
    can be used with
    this layout

In this case the content of the mapping node is used to define more JavaBean properties. Implicit types work as usual, so number is parsed as Integer

Sequence

Scalar may be combined with sequence:

Container(id12): 
  - Item(id111, description = I think; therefore I am.)
  - Item(id222, description = Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it)
  - Item(id333, description = Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm)

By default SnakeYAML tries to locate a property which gets the sequence of Items. It must be a java.lang.List. If there is exactly one such a property then no configuration is required.

When the default behaviour does not work override applySequence(Object bean, List<?> value)

Example

Container(id12): 
  - Item(id111, description = I think; therefore I am.): {size: 15, ratio: 0.125}
  - Item(id222):
      size: 17
      ratio: 0.333
      description: >
        We do not need new lines
        here, just replace them
        all with spaces
  - Item(id333):
      size: 52
      ratio: 0.88
      description: |-
        Please preserve all
        the lines because they may be
        important, but do not include the last one !!!

Source code example