Removing .value from aliases

[nhoizey]

If all values have to be defined with value, as explained by @chazzmoney in #119 (comment) , could .value be removed from the end of all aliases (or made optional, to not break existing ones), as it is used everywhere?

Instead of this:

{
  "color": {
    "alert": { "value": "red" },
    "reference": { "value": "{color.alert.value}" }
  }
}

We could write this:

{
  "color": {
    "alert": { "value": "red" },
    "reference": { "value": "{color.alert}" }
  }
}

Not a great gain here on an example with one single alias, but nice in a larger code base.

[dbanksdesign]

I like this idea, I know it is a pain to write .value all the time. One thing we would need to consider is technically you can reference things that are not tokens. The 'transitive-transforms' example in the 3.0 branch shows one example: https://github.com/amzn/style-dictionary/blob/3.0/examples/advanced/transitive-transforms/tokens/color/core.json5#L13

If there would be a way to do this while not breaking the other types of references I would be all for it!

[nhoizey]

@dbanksdesign I didn't think about transitive transforms indeed. (They are awesome btw!)

One way would be to try the alias path first, and try with the added .value only if it didn't match.

[phun-ky]

what if you want to alias other stuff than value? 🔥

[frankstallone]

How about a build message when it fails due to a missing reference that suggests, "Did you remember to add .value to your reference(s)"? Maybe a band aid but it may be the band aid that Gotham needs, for now. Again, not ideal and as mentioned here you are not always referencing a .value but maybe this helps nudge another idea.

[chazzmoney]

Added via #746

[nhoizey]

@chazzmoney thanks a lot!