HOCON Format

Extension: .conf Library: Configurate (wrapping TypeSafe Config)

HOCON (Human-Optimized Config Object Notation) is a superset of JSON developed by Lightbend. It is extremely powerful and is the standard for the Sponge ecosystem and many server-side plugins.

Features

• Less Noisy: Commas, colons, and braces are often optional.
• Substitutions: You can refer to other values within the config using ${path.to.value} syntax.
• Includes: Supports including other files, allowing you to split massive configs into multiple files.
• Duration/Size Support: Natively understands values like 10m (10 minutes) or 512MB (though YAML Config maps these to Strings or Numbers for generic compatibility).

Implementation

To use HOCON, use ConfigExtension.HOCON.

import com.daqem.yamlconfig.api.config.ConfigExtension;
import com.daqem.yamlconfig.impl.config.ConfigBuilder;

ConfigBuilder builder = new ConfigBuilder(
    "my_mod_id",
    "advanced-config",
    ConfigExtension.HOCON // <--- Selects .conf format
);

Example Output

HOCON can look very similar to JSON, but cleaner:

# Server properties
server {
    # The port to listen on
    port=8080

    # Host address
    host="0.0.0.0"
}

gameplay {
    # Using substitution to reference the base difficulty
    base-difficulty=10

    # Calculated difficulty (conceptual example)
    boss-difficulty=${gameplay.base-difficulty}0

    features {
        magic=true
        tech=false
    }
}

# Lists can be defined without commas if on newlines
whitelist=[
    "Notch"
    "Jeb"
]

When to use HOCON?

HOCON is ideal for very advanced users or server administrators who might want to utilize variable substitution or file inclusion to manage complex modpacks.