Question

I have an existing system that I do not wish to change where I would like to add meta-data/configuration/annotations to an existing user object/entity.

I do not want to change the schema or UI so I am planning on letting the user add this meta-data through a description field of the object where users normally enter in a description. It turns out this field is rarely used however I would still like people to be able to enter in a description and then the meta-data.

Basically I want the parser to be similar to HTML parsers and not fail-fast.

My gut is to do something similar to the Java Properties format but use Regex.
But property files are pretty weak for representing complex data.

Is there an existing non-fail-fast format I should use?

Answer 1

Here’s a good list of standard configuration formats with pros/cons for each:

http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch05s02.html

All of those formats are designed to be easily edited by hand.

EDIT: You described in a comment that you want at most two “layers” of data, in which case the best formats from that page I linked to would be the Windows-style .ini format or the “Record-Jar” format.