Created by Tom Preston-Werner, and originally released in 2013, TOML is a data serialization language designed to be a minimal configuration file format that is easy to read due to obvious semantics.
TOML is an acronym for Tom's Obvious Minimal Language. Its semantics are designed to be minimal, and to map unambiguously to a dictionary. TOML is widely supported and has been implemented in many of the popular programming languages in use today, including C, C#, C++, Clojure, Dart, Elixir, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Lua, Objective-C, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala, Swift, and others.
An alternative to YAML and JSON, the intent is for it to be more human-friendly than JSON and simpler than YAML.
Created by Tom Preston-Werner in 2013, TOML is currently developed and maintained by the TOML Community. As of this writing, its latest release was in 2021. It is open-source, under a permissive MIT license that allows users to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the software without restriction as long as the original copyright notice and license are included.
This portion of our web guide highlights the TOML data serialization language and file format. Topics related to the language and any implementations, tools, or utilities designed to facilitate its use are appropriate for this category, as are user groups, forums, tutorials, reviews, or informational sites.
Recommended Resources
GitHub is a hosting platform on which developers can maintain repositories for programming languages and other software projects, where they can build, scale, and deliver secure software. The official repository for TOML includes the source code for the language, a language agnostic test suite for TOML parsers, compliance tests for TOML parsers and writers, and the language itself. Active contributors to the TOML project are noted, and their GitHub profiles are accessible.
https://github.com/toml-lang/
This is the GitHub repository for TOML++, which is a header-only TOML config file parser and serializer for C++. It is intended to support the latest TOML release, plus optional support for some unreleased TOML features, supporting serialization to JSON and YAML, and has proper UTF-8 handling. Library features support C++17, as well as some C++20 features where available. Detailed information on the API, examples of usage, and other documentation are provided, with links to other resources.
https://github.com/marzer/tomlplusplus
Learn X in Y Minutes, Where X=TOML
Published on a tutorial site called Learn X in Y Minutes, this section of the site provides a quick and concise introduction to TOML, which stands for Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language, and is a data serialization language. The tutorial provides an overview of TOML syntax and usage, including scalar types, string types, integer types, float types, boolean types, datetime types, array types, and table types, as well as examples of TOML code snippets to provide a better understanding.
https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/toml/
Python and TOML: New Best Friends
Published on Real Python, which features tutorials and informational articles on the Python programming language, this is a tutorial on the use of TOML in Python. TOML is a configuration file format that is easy to read due to its obvious semantics and designed to map unambiguously to a hash table. The tutorial explains how to use TOML as a configuration format, how to use it to create configuration files, how to use it to load and parse configuration files in Python, and other topics.
https://realpython.com/python-toml/
Python: tomllib - Parse TOML files
The official documentation website for the Python programming language provides documentation for the Python Standard Library, a collection of modules and packages that come with Python. Among these is the "tomllib" module, part of the Python Standard Library, which provides a way to read and write files in the TOML format, a configuration file format that is designed to be easy to read and write for humans. Examples of its syntax, code, and conversion tables are included.
https://docs.python.org/3/library/tomllib.html
Tom's Obvious Minimal Language (TOML)
The official website for TOML describes the language as a minimal configuration file format that is easy to read due to obvious semantics and designed to map unambiguously to a hash table. An introduction to the language is provided, including code examples, a list of program languages that have implementations for TOML, a list of useful native types included in TOML, a quick tour of its usage, and the full specifications for the language. TOML is available under the MIT License.
https://toml.io/
This tutorial provides an introduction to TOML, a file format used for specifying data in configurations similar to YAML. The site offers a brief overview of the TOML file format, its advantages and disadvantages, and its use cases. It also provides instructions with examples on how to use TOML, including how to open and view TOML files, how to write TOML files using various programming languages, and its suitability for representing data n hash table format.
https://www.w3schools.io/file/toml-introduction/
