Learn hocon tutorials with Chestsheet examples

hocon is a super set of JSON file type, So JSON syntax almost works in hocon configuration file.

So Every syntax of JSON objects works with hocon configuration.

Hocon configuration Syntax

Configuration can be defined with key and value.

Here is an simple configuration defined in hocon .conf file

Here is an syntax

key:value
key=value

key is an string value value can be string, boolean ,array or map or number key and value are separated by colon(:) or equal (=) symbol

The same syntax can be declared and rewritten as follows

{
  key:value

  key=value
}

Root element braces({}) are omitted

The below configuration is also valid

key:value

The same can be rewritten in JSON

{
  "key":"value"
}

Let’s see some examples of different key and values

String value example in hocon

{
keystring:"keyvalue"
keystring1:"keyvalue1"
}

Number value example in hocon

{
keyinteger:12
keyfloat:11.0
}

boolean value example

{
keyboolean:true
keyboolean1:false
keyboolean2:yes
keyboolean3:no
}

Array values example Array contain group of values enclosed in square brackets []. The values in array can be strings, booleans, integers

      emptyArray: []
      intArray: [11, 12, 13]
      stringArray: ["one","two","three"]
      booleanArray: [true,false,yes,no]

Object can also be declared as values in hocon configuration

dev: {
hostname: dev.site.com,
username: username,
password: password,
}

Comments are useful text to describe about each line of text. This will be ignored by processor or compiler during reading.

It supports inline comments and these always stats with ‘//’ and ‘#’

// this is inline comment
\# this is another inline comment

This is one of the important feature which is not availiable in JSON. This is used to include multiple files

let’s declare database.conf which contain common properties database.conf

database.port=5712
database.ssenabled=true

dev.conf

include "database.conf"

hostname: dev.site.com,
username: username,
password: password,

Hocon supports Substitution variable using ${} syntax

It replaces the variable with variable as seen below

devprofile {
      hostname: dev
     
    }
 devpath: ${devprofile.hostname}:8080