NAME YAML::Tiny - Read/Write YAML files with as little code as possible PREAMBLE WARNING: THIS MODULES IS HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE The YAML specification is huge. Like, really huge. It contains all the functionality of XML, except with flexibility and choice, which makes the full specification more complex than XML. The pure-Perl implementation YAML costs just over 4 megabytes of memory to load. Just like with Windows .ini files (3 meg to load) and CSS (3.5 meg to load) the situation is just asking for YAML::Tiny module, to implement a incomplete but usable subset of the functionality, in as little code as possible. Now, given the YAML features one would need in order to have something that is usable for things like META.yml and simple configuration files, there's still enough complexity that I'm not sure if it is even possible to do a YAML::Tiny module. So I'm going to impose some ground rules. Like the other "::Tiny" modules, YAML::Tiny will have no non-core dependencies, and work back to at least perl 5.005_03, hopefully 5.004. I'm setting a hard-limit of 400k of memory (1/10th of YAML.pm). I plan to implement features from the most common to the least common, but if we hit 400k limit then we stop until we can find a way to squish the same functionality into less code and free some up. At this point, other than unquoted scalars, arrays, hashes and ASCII, I promise nothing. At present I've (literally) cut-and-pasted a Config::Tiny-like set of methods, and I've implemented enough code to handle the following. # A comment --- - foo - bar And that's it. So do not use this module for anything other than experimentation. It's only just getting started. SYNOPSIS ############################################# # In your file --- rootproperty: blah section: one: two three: four Foo: Bar empty: ~ ############################################# # In your program use YAML::Tiny; # Create a YAML file my $yaml = YAML::Tiny->new; # Open the config $yaml = YAML::Tiny->read( 'file.yml' ); # Reading properties my $root = $yaml->[0]->{rootproperty}; my $one = $yaml->[0]->{section}->{one}; my $Foo = $yaml->[0]->{section}->{Foo}; # Changing data $yaml->[0]->{newsection} = { this => 'that' }; # Add a section $yaml->[0]->{section}->{Foo} = 'Not Bar!'; # Change a value delete $yaml->[0]->{section}; # Delete a value or section # Add an entire document $yaml->[1] = [ 'foo', 'bar', 'baz' ]; # Save the file $yaml->write( 'file.conf' ); DESCRIPTION "Config::Tiny" is a perl class to read and write YAML-style files with as little code as possible, reducing load time and memory overhead. Most of the time it is accepted that Perl applications use a lot of memory and modules. The "::Tiny" family of modules is specifically intended to provide an ultralight alternative to the standard modules. This module is primarily for reading human written files (like config files) and generating simple human-readable report. Note that I said human-readable and not geek-readable. The sort of files that your average manager or secretary should be able to look at and make sense of. YAML::Tiny does not generate comments, it won't necesarily preserve the order of your hashs, and it may normalise if reading in and writing out again. It only supports a very basic subset of the full YAML specification. It is also targetted at files like Perl's META.yml, for which a small and easily-embeddable module would be highly useful. Features will only be added if they are human readable, and can be written in a few lines of code. Please don't be offended if your request is refused. Someone has to draw the line, and for YAML::Tiny that someone is the module author. If you need something with more power move up to YAML (4 megabytes of\ memory overhead) or YAML::Syck (requires libsyck). To restate, YAML::Tiny does not preserve your comments, whitespace, or the order of your YAML data. But it should round-trip from Perl structure to file and back again just fine. METHODS new The constructor "new" creates and returns an empty "Config::Tiny" object. read $filename The "read" constructor reads a YAML file, and returns a new "YAML::Tiny" object containing the contents of the file. Returns the object on success, or "undef" on error. When "read" fails, "YAML::Tiny" sets an error message internally you can recover via ">. Although in some cases a failed "read" will also set the operating system error variable $!, not all errors do and you should not rely on using the $! variable. read_string $string; The "read_string" method takes as argument the contents of a YAML file (a YAML document) as a string and returns the "YAML::Tiny" object for it. write $filename The "write" method generates the file content for the properties, and writes it to disk to the filename specified. Returns true on success or "undef" on error. write_string Generates the file content for the object and returns it as a string. errstr When an error occurs, you can retrieve the error message either from the $YAML::Tiny::errstr variable, or using the "errstr()" method. SUPPORT Bugs should be reported via the CPAN bug tracker at For other issues, or commercial enhancement or support, contact the author. AUTHOR Adam Kennedy SEE ALSO , YAML, YAML::Syck, Config::Tiny, CSS::Tiny COPYRIGHT Copyright 2006 Adam Kennedy. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.