Cookbooks
C++
Chapter 10. Data Formats and Serialization
Working with TOML

C++:
Working with TOML

How to:

To work with TOML in C++, you’ll need a library like toml++. Here’s a quick start:

#include <toml++/toml.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>

int main() {
    // Parse TOML from a file
    std::ifstream ifs("config.toml");
    auto config = toml::parse(ifs);

    // Accessing a value
    std::string title = config["title"].value_or("Untitled");
    std::cout << "Title: " << title << '\n';

    // Modify and save TOML
    config["title"] = "New Title";
    std::ofstream ofs("config.toml");
    ofs << config;
}

Sample config.toml:

title = "Example"

Sample output:

Title: Example

Deep Dive

TOML was created by Tom Preston-Werner in 2013 as an alternative to YAML and JSON. It’s designed to be simple and explicit, mainly for configuration files. Unlike JSON, TOML focuses on being unambiguous, which means it’s deterministic in how the document is parsed.

Alternatives to TOML include YAML, which is more permissive in what’s allowed, though sometimes at the cost of predictability. JSON, another alternative, is quite strict in structure but not as human-friendly for configurations due to lack of comments and its brace-heavy syntax.

In implementation, toml++ is a header-only C++17 library that’s compliant with the latest TOML specification. It provides a DOM-like interface to navigate and manipulate TOML data, making it straightforward to integrate into projects. The library takes care of the parsing, validation, and output generation, allowing you to get and set TOML data using C++ types.

See Also

Working with JSONWorking with XML