Hi everyone, I've got a Kotlin project (not Android) that involves many variables with user-specific values (e.g. username, password, time-table) I would like this data to be moved out of the code, and into a modifiable file. The goal is to make it easy for non-coders to modify values and use the program. What are my best bets here? (JSON / YAML / etc). And what library should I be using? Here's a link to the project: https://github.com/adizcode/ProxyMate

In the past I’ve gone with Gson and/or Moshi, Kotlin serialization is an option as well, I have no experience with it though. As for the decision between json/yaml, I usually make that decision based on whether there will be repeated values in the data or not. If there is a lot of repeated data, with yaml the user can use anchors and aliases to make that easier to maintain. Otherwise go with json.

TOML is closer to plain text than JSON (less repeated quotes and braces and such) and has less footguns than YAML

alternatively, if the config is simple… properties file?

Thank you for the responses. @Tim Oltjenbruns I don't actually know about properties files. Are they like .env files?

This is great. I'll certainly read about using properties. Thanks :))

This excellent pure Kotlin config library together with YAML seems like a good option in my view: https://github.com/sksamuel/hoplite