structprop 0.0.8

Configuration file parser for a somewhat structures properties file
format. (The syntax borrows a lot from [1])

The parser is designed to be as small and simple as possible.

The syntax of the config files should resemble standard properties
(prop = value) with the additional functionality for structuring the
data. A "structprop" file is an UTF-8 file.

Comments start with '#' and continue until the end of the line.

Line feeds, spaces and tabs are all treated as white space. There are
three special characters; '=', '{' and '}'. '=' is used to assign a
value to a property. '{' and '}' are used to encapsulate structured
data.

Arrays are made up out of simple values enclosed inside a {}-pair.
For example (array with values 1, 2 and "abc").

key = { 1 2 abc }

Since linefeed is like any other whitespace character, the value can
be broken up onto several lines:

key = {
1
2
abc
}

The data can be structued into objects (think of it as a hash-map) by
adding a {}-pair after the key. The content of the object is key-value
pairs or other objects.

name {
key = value
what = foo
}

Keys and values are regular strings that can contain any characters
except the ones mentioned earlier (linefeed, space, tab, #, {, }, =)
provided that the string is not double-quoted.

key = "a value with a space in it"

The python module contains two functions: loads and dumps. "loads"
parses a string into a python dictionary. "dumps" writes a structprop
representation of a python dictionary as a string.

"loads" will try to parse values as regular JSON values (the string
"1" will become an integer with value 1). If it fails, it will leave
the value as a string.

Example:

# This is a simple example config file
database {
hostname = localhost
username = dbuser
password = secret
port = 12361
database = TheDatabase
}

tables = { Table1 Table2 }


[1] https://github.com/matjam/StructuredProperties