YAMLJSON

YAMLJSON is a term used to describe tools, libraries, or data formats that are designed to work with both YAML and JSON representations. It usually refers to dual-format parsers or converters that can read YAML documents and emit JSON, or the reverse, enabling interoperability between systems that prefer one syntax over the other.

YAML and JSON are related formats for structured data. JSON is a subset of YAML 1.2, and any valid JSON document is also valid YAML. This relationship underpins the idea of YAMLJSON as a practical bridge for configuration, data interchange, and application programming interfaces. In practice, YAMLJSON implementations provide a single parsing path or a cohesive API that accepts either YAML or JSON input and produces output in the requested format.

Typical use cases include configuration management, where a project may accept either YAML or JSON config, data pipelines that ingest YAML data and emit JSON payloads, and tooling that serializes internal data structures into a chosen format for storage or transport.

Common features include preserving data structures and types, handling of scalar values, and converting between the formats. However, YAML’s features such as anchors, aliases, and complex tags may complicate round-tripping to JSON, which lacks these constructs. Conversely, JSON’s strict syntax and lack of comments contrast with YAML’s extensibility.

See also: YAML, JSON, data serialization, configuration formats, interop tools.