ABON

(v1.0 anak-ayam)

[Official Site: under construction](under construction)

What is ABON?

• Lightweight data-interchange format

• Compared to XML or JSON

• Simple format

• Easy for humans to read and write
• Easy for machines to parse and generate

• ABON is a text format

• Programming language independent
• Uses conventions that are familiar to programmers of the C-family of languages, including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python

Why Use ABON over XML or JSON

• Lighter and faster than XML or JSON as on-the-wire data format
• ABON objects are typed while XML data is typeless

• ABON types: string, number, array, boolean and symbol
• XML data are all string

• Native data form for Java 1.3 code or above

• Data is readily accessible as ABON objects in your Java code vs. XML data needed to be parsed and assigned to variables through tedious DOM APIs
• Retrieving values is as easy as reading from an object property in your Java code

Where is ABON Used?

• Represent configuration information
• Implement communication protocols

ABON Structures

• A collection of name/value pairs using keyname or just name

• In various languages, this is realized as an object, record, struct, dictionary, hash table, keyed list, or associative array

• An ordered list of values

• In most languages, this is realized as an array, vector, list, or sequence

• These are universal data structures supported by most modern programming languages

ABON Object Notation

• An ABON object is an unordered set of name/value pairs
• An ABON object begins with [ (open bracket) and ends with ] (close bracket)
• Each name is followed by : (colon) and after that is the value that closed by / (forward slash) and followed by ] (close bracket)

ABON and Java

• ABON is a subset of the object literal notation of Java 1.3

• ABON can be used in the Java language with no muss or fuss

Example: ABON Object

ABON format:

String myABONString = 
	"[items1:" +
	  	"[item11:one one/]" +
		"[item12:
			"[item12a:one two a/]" +
			"[item12b:one two b/]" +
			"[item12c:" +
				"[item12ca:one two c a/]" +
			"]" +
		"]" +
		"[item13:one three/]" +
	"]";

read data bytes from string

ABONReader abonReader = new ABONReader(myABONString.getBytes());

or from InputStream

int size = inputStream.available();
byte[] dataBytes = new byte[size];
inputStream.read(dataBytes, 0, size);
ABONReader abonReader = new ABONReader(dataBytes);

• In this example, an ABON Java object is created containing a single member items1, which contains an array containing 5 valued objects, each members represented by keyname or unique node name.
• Members can be retrieved using keyname or node name if name is unique

Example: To retrieve ABON Object

Step-by-step method:

get document from ABON reader

Document document = abonReader.getDocument();

than get node from the document

Node item11Node = document.getNode(“items1.item11”);
Node item12caNode = document.getNode(“items1.item12.item12c.item12ca”);

or if no duplicated node name

Node item11Node = document.getNode(“item11”);
Node item11Node = document.getNode(“items12ca”);

finally

String items11Name = Item11Node.getName();
String items11Value = Item11Node.getValue();

String items12caName = Item12caNode.getName();
String items12caValue = Item12caNode.getValue();