Introduction

JSON5 is an extension of JSON that adds human-friendly syntax features including comments, trailing commas, unquoted keys, and multi-line strings. It maintains full compatibility with standard JSON while being easier to read and write by hand.

Stencila supports JSON5 as a more human-readable, lossless alternative to JSON for storing documents. JSON5 is also used internally within Stencila as a concise, JavaScript-like way to represent node properties within Markdown-based formats.

Usage

Use the .json5 file extension, or the --to json5 or --from json5 options, when converting to/from JSON5 e.g.

stencila convert doc.smd doc.json5

By default, the encoded JSON5 is indented. The --compact option can be used to produce un-indented, single line JSON5.

Implementation

Stencila supports lossless, bi-directional conversion between Stencila documents and JSON5. The codec-json5-trait Rust crate implements from_json5 and to_json5 methods for all node types in Stencila Schema, powered by json5 and json5format.

Limitations

JSON5 is not as widely supported by tooling as standard JSON. Most JSON parsers cannot read JSON5.

Comments added to JSON5 files are not preserved through Stencila round-trips.