`yaml` is a JavaScript parser and stringifier for [YAML](http://yaml.org/), a human friendly data serialization standard. It supports both parsing and stringifying data using all versions of YAML, along with all common data schemas. As a particularly distinguishing feature, `yaml` fully supports reading and writing comments and blank lines in YAML documents.
The library is released under the ISC open source license, and the code is [available on GitHub](https://github.com/eemeli/yaml/). It has no external dependencies and runs on Node.js 6 and later, and in browsers from IE 11 upwards.
For the purposes of versioning, any changes that break any of the endpoints or APIs documented here will be considered semver-major breaking changes. Undocumented library internals may change between minor versions, and previous APIs may be deprecated (but not removed).
For more information, see the project's documentation site: [**eemeli.org/yaml/v1**](https://eemeli.org/yaml/v1/)
To install:
```sh
npm install yaml
```
**Note:** This is `yaml@1`. You may also be interested in the next version, currently available as [`yaml@next`](https://www.npmjs.com/package/yaml/v/next).
## API Overview
The API provided by `yaml` has three layers, depending on how deep you need to go: [Parse & Stringify](https://eemeli.org/yaml/v1/#parse-amp-stringify), [Documents](https://eemeli.org/yaml/#documents), and the [CST Parser](https://eemeli.org/yaml/#cst-parser). The first has the simplest API and "just works", the second gets you all the bells and whistles supported by the library along with a decent [AST](https://eemeli.org/yaml/#content-nodes), and the third is the closest to YAML source, making it fast, raw, and crude.