TOON Format for Crystal

Token-Oriented Object Notation is a compact, human-readable serialization format designed for passing structured data to Large Language Models with significantly reduced token usage. It's intended for LLM input, not output.

This is a Crystal reference implementation of the TOON format specification.

Note: This implementation targets TOON Format Specification Version 4.1 (2026-07-26) and passes the official v4.1 fixture suite.

Installation

Add this to your shard.yml:

dependencies:
  toon:
    github: mamantoha/toon-crystal

Then run:

shards install

Quick Start

require "toon"

data = {
  "user" => {
    "id" => 123,
    "name" => "Ada",
    "tags" => ["reading", "gaming"],
    "active" => true,
    "preferences" => [] of String
  }
}

puts Toon.encode(data)

Output:

user:
  id: 123
  name: Ada
  tags[2]: reading,gaming
  active: true
  preferences: []

You can also decode TOON back to Crystal values:

toon = <<-TOON
  user:
    id: 123
    name: Ada
    tags[2]: reading,gaming
    active: true
    preferences: []
  TOON

value = Toon.decode(toon)
# => {"user" => {"id" => 123, "name" => "Ada", "tags" => ["reading", "gaming"], "active" => true, "preferences" => []}}

API

Toon.encode(value, *, indent = 2, delimiter = ',')

Converts any value to TOON format.

Parameters:

• value – Any value to encode (Hash, Array, primitives, or nested structures)
• indent – Positive number of spaces per indentation level (default: 2)
• delimiter – Delimiter for array values and tabular rows: ',', '\t', or '|' (default: ',')

Returns:

A TOON-formatted string with no trailing newline or spaces.

Examples:

# Basic usage
Toon.encode({ "id" => 1, "name" => "Ada" })
# => "id: 1\nname: Ada"

# Tabular arrays
items = [
  { "sku" => "A1", "qty" => 2, "price" => 9.99 },
  { "sku" => "B2", "qty" => 1, "price" => 14.5 }
]
Toon.encode({ "items" => items })
# => "items[2]{sku,qty,price}:\n  A1,2,9.99\n  B2,1,14.5"

# Custom delimiter (tab)
Toon.encode({ "items" => items }, delimiter: '\t')
# => "items[2	]{sku	qty	price}:\n  A1\t2\t9.99\n  B2\t1\t14.5"

Toon.decode(input, *, indent = 2, strict = true)

Parses a TOON-formatted string into native Crystal values.

Parameters:

• input – TOON-formatted string
• indent – Positive number of spaces per indentation level (default: 2)
• strict – Enable validations for indentation, tabs, blank lines, and extra rows/items (default: true)

Returns:

A Crystal value (Nil | Bool | Int64 | Float64 | String | Array | Hash(String, _)).

Examples:

Toon.decode("tags[3]: a,b,c")
# => {"tags" => ["a", "b", "c"]}

Toon.decode("[2]{id}:\n  1\n  2")
# => [{"id" => 1}, {"id" => 2}]

Toon.decode("items[2]:\n  - id: 1\n    name: First\n  - id: 2\n    name: Second")
# => {"items" => [{"id" => 1, "name" => "First"}, {"id" => 2, "name" => "Second"}]}

Development

After checking out the repo, run:

shards install

Updating the Spec Submodule

This project uses the TOON specification repository as a git submodule at ext/spec. This contains the language-agnostic test fixtures.

Initial setup (when cloning the repo):

git submodule update --init --recursive

Update the spec submodule to get the latest test fixtures:

git submodule update --remote ext/spec

This will pull the latest commits from the upstream spec repository and update the submodule reference.

Running Tests

Run the test suite:

crystal spec

The test suite uses fixtures from ext/spec/tests/fixtures/ and automatically discovers all fixture files in the encode and decode directories.

Resources

• TOON Specification
• Main Repository
• Benchmarks & Performance
• Other Language Implementations

Contributing

1. Fork it (https://github.com/mamantoha/toon-crystal/fork)
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request

Contributors

• Anton Maminov - creator and maintainer

License

The project is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.