YAML - Basics

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Now that you have an idea about YAML and its features, let us learn its basics with syntax and other operations. Remember that YAML includes a human readable structured format.

Rules for Creating YAML file

When you are creating a file in YAML, you should remember the following basic rules −

  • YAML is case sensitive

  • The files should have .yaml as the extension

  • YAML does not allow the use of tabs while creating YAML files; spaces are allowed instead

Basic Components of YAML File

The basic components of YAML are described below −

Conventional Block Format

This block format uses hyphen+space to begin a new item in a specified list. Observe the example shown below −

--- # Favorite movies
 - Casablanca
 - North by Northwest
 - The Man Who Wasn't There

Inline Format

Inline format is delimited with comma and space and the items are enclosed in JSON. Observe the example shown below −

--- # Shopping list
   [milk, groceries, eggs, juice, fruits]

Folded Text

Folded text converts newlines to spaces and removes the leading whitespace. Observe the example shown below −

- {name: John Smith, age: 33}
- name: Mary Smith
  age: 27

The structure which follows all the basic conventions of YAML is shown below −

men: [John Smith, Bill Jones]
women:
  - Mary Smith
  - Susan Williams

Synopsis of YAML Basic Elements

  • The synopsis of YAML basic elements is given here: Comments in YAML begins with the (#) character.

  • Comments must be separated from other tokens by whitespaces.

  • Indentation of whitespace is used to denote structure.

  • Tabs are not included as indentation for YAML files.

  • List members are denoted by a leading hyphen (-).

  • List members are enclosed in square brackets and separated by commas.

  • Associative arrays are represented using colon ( : ) in the format of key value pair. They are enclosed in curly braces {}.

  • Multiple documents with single streams are separated with 3 hyphens (---).

  • Repeated nodes in each file are initially denoted by an ampersand (&) and by an asterisk (*) mark later.

  • YAML always requires colons and commas used as list separators followed by space with scalar values.

  • Nodes should be labelled with an exclamation mark (!) or double exclamation mark (!!), followed by string which can be expanded into an URI or URL.

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