SDLang (Simple Declarative Language) for Visual Studio

A comprehensive language extension for SDLang (Simple Declarative Language) in Visual Studio. This extension provides first-class support for reading, writing, and understanding .sdl files directly within your IDE.

SDLang is an elegant, human-friendly declarative language that is conceptually similar to XML or JSON, but with a much cleaner syntax focused on developer ergonomics.

Features

This extension brings modern language features to SDLang files within Visual Studio, making it easier than ever to work with SDLang documents:

Syntax Highlighting

Full semantic coloring for all SDLang constructs, helping you easily distinguish between tags, attributes, values, namespaces, and blocks.

Live Error and Syntax Validation

Powered by a dedicated Language Server and the lightning-fast .NET parser (EllipticBit.SDLang), the extension provides real-time validation of your .sdl files.

• Diagnostic squiggles on syntax errors directly in the editor.
• detailed error entries in the Visual Studio Error List window.
• Protection against unterminated strings/comments, malformed values, and invalid byte sequences.

Seamless Integration

The extension associates .sdl fles with an enhanced language editor experience automatically. It integrates cleanly with Visual Studio's TextMate grammar support and standard IDE features.

What is SDLang?

A tag in SDLang has a name, optional values, optional attributes, and optional children. See for yourself:

// A tag has a name, optional values, optional attributes, and optional children.
greeting "Hello World"

person "Alice" age=42 active=true {
	address "1 Main St" city="Springfield"
}

matrix {
	row 1 2 3
	row 4 5 6
}

• Values are positional literals ("Alice", 1, true).
• Attributes are name=value pairs.
• Children live inside { } blocks.
• Tags may be namespaced (ns:config).

Ecosystem Support

This Visual Studio extension is built to accompany the EllipticBit.SDLang NuGet package, an ultra-fast, zero-allocation SDLang parser, mutable DOM, and JSON-like object serializer for modern .NET.

Working side-by-side with the package, this extension brings the same level of capability and type-safety check guarantees to your IDE's editing surface.

Feedback and Contributions

If you find a bug or have a feature request, please head over to the GitHub Repository to submit an issue or open a pull request. Contributions are welcome!

License: Boost Software License 1.0 (BSL-1.0)