What is TOON?
Toon stands for Token-Oriented Object Notation, you might ask why use this over JSON, well JSON includes some unnecessary syntax – such as commas and curly brackets – that are used separate or enclose blocks of data, but in LLMs these extra characters are counted as additional tokens, which can increase your api calling costs.
TOON solves this problem by providing a more compact, token-efficient format that keeps your data both optimized and human-readable, while using fewer tokens overall.
More detailed article about toon →
Get the Roblox version here:
Source Code
local function _getTableType(t) -- thanks to XAXA for this function
if next(t) == nil then return "Empty" end
local isArray = true
local isDictionary = true
for k, _ in next, t do
if typeof(k) == "number" and k%1 == 0 and k > 0 then
isDictionary = false
else
isArray = false
end
end
if isArray then
return "Array"
elseif isDictionary then
return "Dictionary"
else
return "Mixed"
end
end
local function getDictionaryLength(val)
local count = 0
for _ in val do
count += 1
end
return count
end
local function _stringify(v)
if typeof(v) == "string" then
if string.find(v, " ") or string.find(v, '"') then
return `"{v}"`
else
return v
end
elseif typeof(v) == "boolean" then
return v and "true" or "false"
else
return tostring(v)
end
end
local function trim(s)
return s:match("^%s*(.-)%s*$")
end
local function _encodeTable(tbl, indent)
local str = ""
for key, value in tbl do
local prefix = string.rep(" ", indent)
if typeof(value) == "table" then
local tableType = _getTableType(value)
if tableType == "Empty" then
str ..= `{prefix}{key}[0]:\n`
elseif tableType == "Array" then
if #value == 0 then
str ..= `{prefix}{key}[0]:\n`
elseif typeof(value[1]) == "table" then
local first = value[1]
local length = #value
local keys = {}
for k in first do
table.insert(keys, k)
end
str ..= prefix .. key .. "[" .. length .. "]{" .. table.concat(keys, ",") .. "}:\n"
for _, v in value do
local vals = {}
for _, k in keys do
table.insert(vals, _stringify(v[k]))
end
str ..= `{prefix} {table.concat(vals, ",")}\n`
end
else
str ..= `{prefix}{key}[{#value}]: `
local vals = {}
for _, v in value do
table.insert(vals, _stringify(v))
end
str ..= `{table.concat(vals, ",")}\n`
end
elseif tableType == "Dictionary" then
if next(value) == nil then
str ..= `{prefix}{key}[0]:\n`
else
str ..= `{prefix}{key}:\n`
str ..= _encodeTable(value, indent + 1)
end
end
else
str ..= `{prefix}{key}: {_stringify(value)}\n`
end
end
return str
end
return function(tbl)
if not tbl then return "" end
return _encodeTable(tbl, 0)
end
Usage:
local data = {
name = 'Alice',
age = 30,
hobbies = {'reading', 'gaming', 'hiking'},
results = {
english = 15,
spanish = 20,
maths = 20
},
logs = {
{name = "Gym", timestamp = 1240125920, present = true},
{name = "English", timestamp = 1240126920, present = false};
}
}
local encoded = Toon.encode(data)
print(encoded)
Benchmarks
Default json:
TOON:
Hope this module helps, feel free to edit it however you like, you can add support for vectors, color3s cframe and other data types.