anymarkup 0.3.1

Notes on Parsing Basic Types

When parsing, anymarkup recognizes basic types - NoneType, int, float and bool (and long on Python 2) and converts all values to these types. If you want to get everything as strings, just use force_types=False with parse or parse_file:

import anymarkup
# will yield {'a': 1}
anymarkup.parse('a: 1')
# will yield {'a': '1'}
anymarkup.parse('a: 1', force_types=False)

Notes on OrderedDict

Parsing certain types of markup can yield Python’s OrderedDict type - namely XML documents and YAML !!omap (see http://yaml.org/type/omap.html). anymarkup handles this without a problem, but note that if you serialize these as JSON or INI and then parse again, you’ll lose the ordering information (meaning you’ll get just dict back).

This is because JSON and INI parsers (to my knowledge) don’t consider ordering key-value structures important and there’s no direct means in these markup languages to express ordering key-value structures.

Examples

Parsing examples:

import anymarkup

ini = """
[a]
foo = bar"""

json = """
{"a": {
    "foo": "bar"
}}"""

xml = """<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<a>
    <foo>bar</foo>
</a>"""

yaml = """
a:
  foo: bar
"""

# these will all yield the same value (except that xml parsing will yield OrderedDict)
anymarkup.parse(ini)
anymarkup.parse(json)
anymarkup.parse(xml)
anymarkup.parse(yaml)

# explicitly specify a type of format to expect and/or encoding (utf-8 is default)
anymarkup.parse('foo: bar', format='yaml', encoding='ascii')

# by default, anymarkup recognizes basic types (None, booleans, ints and floats)
#   if you want to get everything as strings, just use force_types=False

# will yield {'a': 1, 'b': True, 'c': None}
anymarkup.parse('a: 1\nb: True\nc: None')
# will yield {'a': '1', 'b': 'True', 'c': 'None'}
anymarkup.parse('a: 1\nb: True\nc: None', force_types=False)

# or parse a file
anymarkup.parse_file('foo.ini')

# if a file doesn't have a format extension, pass it explicitly
anymarkup.parse_file('foo', format='json')

# you can also pass encoding explicitly (utf-8 is default)
anymarkup.parse_file('bar', format='xml', encoding='ascii')

Serializing examples:

import anymarkup

struct = {'a': ['b', 'c']}

for fmt in ['ini', 'json', 'xml', 'yaml']:
    # any of the above formats can be used for serializing
    anymarkup.serialize(struct, fmt)

# explicitly specify encoding (utf-8 is default)
anymarkup.serialize(struct, 'json', encoding='utf-8')

# or serialize directly to a file
anymarkup.serialize_file(struct, 'foo/bar.ini')

# if a file doesn't have a format extension, pass it explicitly
anymarkup.serialize_file(struct, 'foo/bar', format='json')

# you can also pass encoding explicitly (utf-8 is default)
anymarkup.serialize_file(struct, 'foo/bar', format='json', encoding='ascii')