Yaml Normalizer

YAML is a file format that's human-readable and very common among Ruby projects. The YAML standard is well-defined and supported by many programming languages. Ruby's default YAML parser and emitter is Psych.

Yaml Normalizer follows the notion that there is a normalized YAML file format. It re-formats YAML files in a way that the results closely match Psych's output. Yaml Normalizer ensures that the original file and the resulting file are identical regarding the resulting Hash from Psych (stable change). The primary target of this project are i18n YAML files.

Yaml Normalizer provides

• Alphabetic Ordering
  • to improve (human-)readability and maintainability,
  • to avoid duplicate keys,
  • to minimize effort when resolving merge conflicts in YAML files
• Limited Line Length
  • to improve (human-)readability and maintainability
• Non-breaking Changes only
  • to ensure changes do not impact functional parts of the application. Yaml Normalizer considers changing the order of YAML file entries as non-breaking,
  • to build maximum trust in Yaml Normalizer and its generated YAML files,
  • to avoid the need of manual reviews.

Yaml Normalizer can be used in frameworks like Rails, Sinatra or Cuba, but it runs stand-alone as well.

$ gem install yaml_normalizer

Yaml Normalizer provides you with two executables: yaml_normalize and yaml_check. This is how you run them in your terminal:

$ yaml_check my_yaml_file.yml
$ yaml_normalize my_yaml_file.yml

To check the current version of yaml_normalizer type: $ yaml_check --version

or

$ yaml_normalize -v

To see the help message for yaml_normalizer type: $ yaml_check --help

or

$ yaml_normalize -h

In your Gemfile, add

  gem 'yaml_normalizer', require: false

In a Rails context, you might want to only add it to :development and :test groups.

In your Rakefile, add

require 'yaml_normalizer/rake_task'
YamlNormalizer::RakeTask.new do |config|
  yamls = Dir['**/*.yml']  # TODO: Select relevant YAML files in your project.
  config.files = yamls
end

This will give you two additional rake task (rake -T)

rake yaml:check      # Check if configured YAML files are normalized
rake yaml:normalize  # Normalize configured YAML files

In order to start developing with Yaml Normalizer you need to install the following dependencies:

• git (version control)
• Ruby (programming language)
• RubyGems (package manager for Ruby)
• Bundler (dependency manager for RubyGems)

$ git clone git@github.com:Sage/yaml_normalizer.git
$ cd yaml_normalizer/
$ bundle install
$ rake

$ bundle exec rake yard

After generating yard documentation, open index.html at doc/ in your browser.

$ bundle exec rake

Running this task executes the following tasks: inch rubocop ci_flog ci_spec mutant

$ bundle exec rake inch

This task applies static code analysis to measure documentation quality. Inch also suggests improvements.

$ bundle exec guard

Guard keeps track of file changes and automatically runs the unit tests related to changed files.

$ bundle exec rake spec

This task runs the full unit test suite based on RSpec.

$ bundle exec rake mutant

$ bundle exec rake rubocop
$ bundle exec rake rubocop:auto_correct

$ bundle exec flog -a lib

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/Sage/yaml_normalizer.

We want to keep engineering standards high and use code reviews and test tools to help with that. Yaml Normalizer is designed to have no side effects, especially regarding Ruby Core and Standard Lib implementation. Also, we want to keep simplecov, rubocop, flog, inch and mutant happy. We will add more details on PRs if needed.

Yaml Normalizer is available as open source under the terms of the Apache-2.0 licence.

Copyright (c) 2017-2019 Sage Group Plc. All rights reserved.