YAML stands for “YAML Ain’t Markup Language”. In is an alternative to markup languages like JSON and XML.
YAML supports the same basic data types as JavaScript, booleans, numbers, strings, arrays, and objects (a.k.a hash or dictionary).
Booleans are true and false.
Numbers are written as expected.
Strings containing no spaces or special characters do not require quotes.
When quotes are needed, they can be single or double quotes.
Multi-line strings start with > and continue until the end of their indentation.
For example:
lifeStory: >
Come and listen to my story `bout a man named Jed.
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed.
Arrays are specified by listing each element preceded by a dash and a space. For example:
colors:
- red
- green
- blue
Objects (a.k.a dicts) are written as key/value pairs on separate, indented lines where keys are followed by a colon. For example:
address:
street: 123 Some Lane
city: Somewhere
state: CA
zip: 12345
Arrays can hold objects and other arrays.. Object property values can be arrays and other objects.
Comments begin with # and extend to the end of the line.
Multi-line comments are not supported.