schema specification in yaml

[gopik]

Required Functionality
Current implementation requires that the schemas be specified in json format. This is too verbose compared to yaml.

Proposed Solution
A simplest fix could be add an option that first converts the provided yaml to json and uses the json as schema spec, with this requiring no change in the code impl. We could always do this in shell, but would be a useful addition if it's preferred by many.

[gopik]

We could just configure yaml deserializer for the config.

[AlexMikhalev]

I don't think it will be that simple:
I tried to use toml and yaml in my other project and I didn't like end result - creating nested structures in yaml/toml is way more complex than in json. Below is a part of the sample JSON config. How would you turn it into yaml and what would be benefit?

            "type": "datasource",
            "path": "json:iodata.json",
            "cycle": true
          },
            "timestamp": {
                "type": "date_time",
                "format": "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z",
                "begin": "2000-01-01T00:00:00+0000",
                "end": "2020-01-01T00:00:00+0000"
              },
              "device_id": {
                "type": "same_as",
                "ref": "device.content.id"
              },
              "device_type": {
                "type": "same_as",
                "ref": "device.content.device_type"
              }
    }
}

[iamwacko]

While I don't see much of a benefit of using YAML, nesting in YAML isn't that complicated. To turn what you have into YAML. the braces, commas, and some of the parentheses are removed.

            type: "datasource"
            path: "json:iodata.json"
            cycle: true
            timestamp: 
                type: "date_time"
                format: "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z"
                begin: "2000-01-01T00:00:00+0000"
                end: "2020-01-01T00:00:00+0000"
            device_id: 
                type: "same_as"
                ref: "device.content.id"
            device_type: 
                type: "same_as"
                ref: "device.content.device_type"

[AlexMikhalev]

Then we need to turn path: "json:iodata.json" too. Let's stick to JSON for now. I am going to close the ticket until we both will see the benefit of adding YAML.

[gopik]

The main advantage with yaml over json is, we can get rid of most double quotes and all braces. I find it more human friendly serialization compared to json.

I proposed this assuming the following. Please let me know if these are incorrect.

1. json and yaml are equivalent serialization for a given struct in rust.
2. json and yaml can coexist, some schemas can be json while other schemas yaml, although this is not a breaker for new projects using synth.