Getting Started with Molt

Welcome to Molt, the high-performance data transformation stack! This guide will help you understand what Molt is and why you should use it.

What is Molt?

Molt is a comprehensive suite of data transformation libraries built for performance and developer experience. Each package in the Molt ecosystem is designed to handle a specific data format with extreme efficiency and type safety.

Available Packages

• @sylphx/molt-json - Type-preserving JSON parser and serializer
• @sylphx/molt-yaml - Ultra-fast YAML processor
• @sylphx/molt-toml - High-performance TOML parser
• @sylphx/molt-ini - Fast INI configuration parser
• @sylphx/molt-csv - Blazingly fast CSV handler
• @sylphx/molt-xml - Competitive XML parser with dirty input support
• @sylphx/molt-msgpack - Binary MessagePack encoder/decoder
• @sylphx/molt-toon - LLM-optimized Token-Oriented Object Notation

Why Choose Molt?

🚀 Exceptional Performance

Molt consistently outperforms industry-standard libraries across all formats:

Format	Performance	vs Competition
YAML	1,021,050 ops/s	2.87x faster than js-yaml
TOML	892,620 ops/s	2.07x faster than @iarna/toml
JSON	610,000 ops/s	1.7x faster serialization
INI	High	2-3x faster than ini (npm)
CSV	775,770 ops/s	5.9x faster than papaparse
XML	102,975 ops/s	Matches fast-xml-parser
MessagePack	Competitive	Comparable to @msgpack/msgpack
TOON	N/A	30-60% fewer tokens for LLMs

See Benchmarks for detailed comparisons.

🛡️ Type Safety

JavaScript types like Date, BigInt, Map, Set, and RegExp are automatically preserved through serialization with molt-json:

const data = {
  created: new Date(),
  id: 123456789012345678901n,
  tags: new Set(['a', 'b', 'c']),
  config: new Map([['key', 'value']])
}

const json = molt.stringify(data)
const restored = molt(json)

restored.created instanceof Date  // true
restored.id === 123456789012345678901n  // true
restored.tags instanceof Set  // true

🧹 Dirty Input Support

Real-world data is messy. Molt handles it gracefully:

// JavaScript-style comments
const data = molt(`{
  // This is a comment
  name: 'Alice',         // Unquoted key
  email: 'alice@test.com', // Single quotes
  tags: [1, 2, 3,],      // Trailing comma
}`)

📦 Zero Dependencies

All Molt packages are production-grade with zero external dependencies. Pure TypeScript with optional Rust/WASM acceleration for compute-intensive operations.

⚡ Ready for Production

• 120+ test cases per package
• Streaming support for large files
• Schema validation (Zod, JSON Schema compatible)
• Comprehensive error messages
• Type-safe TypeScript APIs

Quick Installation

Using npm

npm install @sylphx/molt-json

Using pnpm

pnpm add @sylphx/molt-json

Using Bun

bun add @sylphx/molt-json

Replace molt-json with your desired package: molt-yaml, molt-toml, molt-csv, or molt-xml.

Basic Usage Examples

JSON

import { molt, stringify } from '@sylphx/molt-json'

// Parse dirty JSON
const data = molt('{ name: "Alice", age: 30 }')

// Stringify with type preservation
const json = stringify({ created: new Date() })

YAML

import { parse, stringify } from '@sylphx/molt-yaml'

const config = parse(`
  database:
    host: localhost
    port: 5432
`)

console.log(stringify(config))

TOML

import { parse, stringify } from '@sylphx/molt-toml'

const config = parse(`
[package]
name = "my-app"
version = "1.0.0"
`)

CSV

import { parse, stringify } from '@sylphx/molt-csv'

const records = parse('name,age\nAlice,30')
console.log(stringify(records))

XML

import { parse, toObject } from '@sylphx/molt-xml'

const doc = parse('<root><item>value</item></root>')
const obj = toObject(doc)

INI

import { molt } from '@sylphx/molt-ini'

const config = molt(`
[database]
host = localhost
port = 5432
`)

MessagePack

import { encode, decode } from '@sylphx/molt-msgpack'

const binary = encode({ user: 'alice' })
const data = decode(binary)

TOON

import { parseTOON, serializeTOON } from '@sylphx/molt-toon'

// Parse TOON format
const data = parseTOON(`
users:
  id | name  | age
  1  | Alice | 30
  2  | Bob   | 25
`)

// Serialize to TOON (30-60% fewer tokens)
const toon = serializeTOON(data)

Next Steps

• Installation Guide - Detailed setup for each package
• Quick Start Examples - More comprehensive examples
• Benchmarks - Performance comparison details
• Package Documentation - Deep dive into each package's features

Need Help?

• Check the Frequently Asked Questions below
• Visit the GitHub Issues
• Start a Discussion

FAQ

Q: Which package should I choose?

A: Choose based on your data format:

• JSON data → molt-json
• YAML config → molt-yaml
• TOML settings → molt-toml
• CSV data → molt-csv
• XML documents → molt-xml

Q: Does Molt require special setup?

A: No! Just install the package and start using it. Zero configuration needed.

Q: Are types truly preserved in molt-json?

A: Yes! Date, BigInt, Map, Set, RegExp, Uint8Array, and more are automatically preserved through stringify/parse cycles.

Q: How much faster is Molt really?

A: Significantly faster in most cases. YAML is 2-415x faster, TOML is 2-9x faster, JSON serialization is 1.7-2.3x faster. See benchmarks for details.

Q: Is this production-ready?

A: Absolutely. Molt is used in production applications with 120+ tests per package and zero external dependencies.

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Ready to get started? Check out the Installation Guide next!