Cookbooks
Lua
Chapter 10. Data Formats and Serialization
Working with TOML

Lua:
Working with TOML

How to:

First, make sure your Lua environment has a TOML parser. We’ll use lua-toml for this example.

local toml = require("toml")

-- Parse TOML string
local toml_data = [[
title = "TOML Example"

[owner]
name = "Tom Preston-Werner"
dob = 1979-05-27T07:32:00Z
]]

local data = toml.parse(toml_data)
print(data.title) -- "TOML Example"

-- Generate TOML string
local table_data = {
  title = "TOML Example",
  owner = {
    name = "Tom Preston-Werner",
    dob = os.time({year=1979, month=5, day=27, hour=7, min=32})
  }
}

local toml_string = toml.encode(table_data)
print(toml_string)

Sample Output:

TOML Example

Deep Dive

TOML was created by Tom Preston-Werner in 2013 as an alternative to other data serialization languages like XML and YAML, offering a more straightforward format to represent configuration data. While JSON is ubiquitous, its syntax can be cumbersome for config files. TOML shines with a clearer syntax for humans, resembling .ini files but with nesting capabilities and data types.

Alternatives to TOML include JSON, YAML, and XML. However, TOML is specifically designed for config and is arguably simpler than YAML, more readable than JSON for config purposes, and less verbose than XML.

Implementing TOML handling in Lua generally requires a third-party library. Performance and features can vary, from basic parsing to full serialization support. When dealing with large config files or frequent reading/writing operations, consider the library’s performance and compliance with the latest TOML version.

See Also

Working with JSONWorking with XML