The BML Data Serialization Language

BML is a data serialization language. It allows to manipulate data in several types.

Guides and Documentation

All documentation of BML can be found here. It contains all guides and detailed documentation.

Specification

• Comments: BML allows one-line comments. Comments start with a hash symbol (#). E.g. # This is a comment.
• Keys: keys can be started with an underscore (_) or letter, followed by numbers, lower or upper case letters, and/or underscores.
• Values:
  • Strings: strings must be in double-quotes. E.g. "this is a string".
  • Chars: chars must be in quotes. E.g. 'c'.
  • Integers¹: e.g. 255.
  • Float¹: e.g. floats can be write 255., 255.0 or 255f.
  • Boolean: booleans can be true or false.
  • Array: arrays must be between braces ([ ]) separated by comma (,). E.g. [0, 1, 2], ['a', 'b', 'c'], [[0, 1], [0, 1]] and so on.

¹ Some types must be parsed as maximum language precision for that type.

File in BML Notation

# All data types of a BML file.

# Literals
string:"string \"between\" double quotes";
char:'c';
quote_in_char:'\'';

# Numerics
int:10;
float:0.5;

# Booleans
boolTrue:true;
boolFalse:false;

# Vector
stringArr:["yes", "no", "maybe"];
chargArr:['a', 'b', 'c'];
intArr:[0, 1, 2, 10, -5];
floatArr:[0.9, 1.7, -0.2, 1.06, -5.618];
boolArr:[true, false, true];

# Matrix
multArr2:[
  [0, 1, 2],
  [0, 1, 2],
  [0, 1, 2]
];

# Multidimensional array
multArr3:[
  [
    [0, 1, 2],
    [0, 1, 2],
    [0, 1, 2]
  ],
  [
    [0, 1, 2],
    [0, 1, 2],
    [0, 1, 2]
  ],
  [
    [0, 1, 2],
    [0, 1, 2],
    [0, 1, 2]
  ]
];

# Sub-structures
sub_str:
  v1: 10;
  v2: "sub";
;

# Array of sub-structures
stringArr:[
  sub_str:
    v1:10;
    v2:"sub";
  ;,
  sub_str:
    v1:11;
    v2:"sup";
  ;,
  sub_str:
    v1:20;
    v2:"sut";
  ;
];

BML Handle Specification

Below will be described all methods that a BML Handler must have.

BML class/source file

Methods

• public static Dictionary<string, object> Parse(string data) This method will parse a string representation in BML notation to a dictionary.
• public static string Stringify(Dictionary<string, object> data) This method will return a string representation in BML notation.