Generate your own minilanguages fast using json as a startingpoint. No parsetrees, no lexical analyzers, just plain json.

Usage

$ npm install json-dsl

in your code

jdsl = require('json-dsl').parse
output = jdsl( yourjson )

basics: xml

By default nested json is converted into xml

{
  "div": {
    "div": {
      "div": "foo"
    }
  }
}

gets converted into

<div><div><div>foo</div></div></div>

customize key evaluation

lets evaluate the keys in a different way:

jsondsl = require('json-dsl')
jsondsl.parseKey = function(k) {
  return k + "[%s]";
};
output = jdsl( yourjson )

output:

div[div[div[foo]]]

customize value evaluation

lets take the previous example and lets add parseValue

data = { foo: "bar" }
jsondsl.parseValue = function(v,data) {
  return data[v]
}
output = jdsl( yourjson, data )

output:

div[div[div[bar]]]

example: html template language

NOTE: the dsl below is a stripped down version of the brown template engine, a hyperminimalistic template dsl which borrows from emmet and mustache.

setup dsl:

var jdsl = require('json-dsl');
var zen = require('zen-coding');

jdsl.parseKey = function(k) {
  return zen(k + '>{%s}');
};

jdsl.parseValue = function(v, data) {
  return data[v];
};

lets test it:

var json = {
  'div#foo.flop>fieldset>div>ul': {
    'li.one>a[href="/"]': 'one',
    'li.two>a[href="/"]': 'two'
  }
};

var data = {
  'one': 'hello',
  'two': 'world'
};

console.log(JSON.stringify(json, null, 2));
console.log(jdsl.parse(json, data));

outputs:

<div id="foo" class="flop"><fieldset><div><ul><li class="one"><a href="/">hello</a></li><li class="two"><a href="/">world</a></li></ul></div></fieldset></div>