Introduction

Programming language q has a native JSON parser but JSON is not the only format for a configuration file. However, XML is tab intensive and YAML requires careful space insertion. Here, Tom's Obvious Minimal Language (TOML) is friendly for both human and program.

tomlq is a TOML file parser for q. You don't need to care notrious null value any more. You don't need the headach of attributes. Just write fair-looking configuration file and parse it.

Type Mapping

q	TOML
bool	bool
long	int
float	double
symbol	string (length <= 30)
timestamp	timesatamp *[1]
date	date
time	time
list of bool	array of bool
list of long	array of int
list of float	array of double
string	string (length > 30)
list of symbol	array of string *[2]
list of timetamp	array of timestamp *[1]
list of date	array of date
list of time	array of time
compound list	array of array, array of table, array of mixture
dictionary	table

*[1]: Millisecond precision
*[2]: Length of each symbol must be 63

Installation

tomlq uses CMake to build and install the shared library. The available option at installation is CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX which defines a root of the install destination. If the option is not passed the artefact is installed to ${QHOME}/[os] where [os] is l64, w64 etc.

The example below installs tomlq.so to tomlq/install/.

tomlq]$ mkdir install
tomlq]$ mkdir cmake
tomlq]$ cd cmake
cmake]$ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="../install" ../
cmake]$ cmake --build . --target install

Using tomlq

For users who installed tomlq outside of ${QHOME}/[os], there is a custom environmental variable to help user to load teh library successfully:

• Q_LIBRARY_PATH: Absolute path to the directory where tomlq.so exists

The example below assumes you installed tomlq library under tomlq/install/.

tomlq]$ (export Q_LIBRARY_PATH=$(pwd)/install; q q/toml.q)

q).toml.load `:file/sample.toml
title   | `TOML Example
owner   | `name`dob!(`Tom Preston-Werner;1979.05.27D15:32:00.000000000)
database| `enabled`ports`data`temp_targets!(1b;8000 8001 8002;(``phi;,3.14);`..
servers | `alpha`beta!+`ip`role!(`10.0.0.1`10.0.0.2;`frontend`backend)

Test

Testing tomlq uses test_helper_function.q which is placed under tests/ directory of kdbplus.

tomlq]$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/diamondrod/kdbplus/master/tests/test_helper_function.q -O tests/test_helper_function.q
tomlq]$ q tests/test.q
test result: ok. 19 passed; 0 failed

License

This library is licensed under MIT license.

Note

This library is utilizing tomlc99 under MIT License.