How can I set/get a HashMap in a YAML configuration file? - yaml

I am making my first bukkit plugin. I would like to programmatically create a YAML file that represents a HashMap. How can I set and get this data structure?
The HashMap parameters look like <Signature, Location>, where Signature is my class that stores 4 integers, and Location is org.bukkit.Location
I think I would like the YAML file to look like this, but I am not sure if this structure is best:
MyPlugin:
ListOfData:
- signature: [1,2,3,4] # this is a unique set of 4 integers
location: [122,64,254] # non-unique set of 3 integers
- signature: [4,2,1,2]
location: [91,62,101]
- signature: [3,3,1,3]
location: [190,64,321]
Signature can be modified as necessary, and I can create a wrapper for Location if necessary.
Thanks!

This is a suggested solution. I don't know if it is the best way...:)
You may want to consider this as your yaml structure:
MyPlugin:
ListOfData:
'[1,2,3,4]': '[122,64,254]'
'[4,2,1,2]': '[91,62,101]'
'[3,3,1,3]': '[190,64,321]'
anothersignature:anotherlocation
...
This will let you read the "ListOfData" in using the normal technique for reading hash map from a YAMLConfiguration (see below).
You'll have to treat the incoming information from the file as a HashMap of <String, String> and do any translation (e.g. turn 122,64,254 into a location) you need from there.
For reading a HashMap:
this.getConfig().getConfigurationSection("path.to.map").getValues(false)
For writing a HashMap (saveConfig() will still need to be called to write to disk):
this.getConfig().createSection("path.to.map", MyMap)
There's some details and subtleties here, its worth reading these carefully (same page, but different non-contiguous sections):
http://wiki.bukkit.org/Configuration_API_Reference#HashMaps
http://wiki.bukkit.org/Configuration_API_Reference#HashMaps_2

Related

Helm split global section

I have a helm values.yaml file like below
global:
foo: bar
foo1: bar1
random-chart:
fooo: baar
My use case is to append values in both global and random-chart during run time.
After appending values, the chart looks like this.
global:
foo: bar
foo1: bar1
random-chart:
fooo: baar
global:
secret: password
random-chart:
secret1: password1
Since there's 2 different global and random-chart keys. Will it work as intended and is it a good practice to do that?
This probably won't work as intended.
The YAML 1.2.2 spec notes (emphasis from original):
The content of a mapping node is an unordered set of key/value node pairs, with the restriction that each of the keys is unique.
And in discussing loading errors continues:
... mapping keys may not be unique ....
So the YAML file you show has a mapping with two keys both named global and two keys both named random-chart, and that's not valid. Depending on the specific YAML library that's being used, this might be interpreted as a loading error, or the library might just pick the last value of global.
In general, it's hard to work with YAML files using line-oriented shell tools, since there are so many syntactic variations. A dedicated library in a higher-level language will usually work better. For example, using the Python PyYAML library:
import yaml
with open('values.in.yaml', 'r') as f:
values = yaml.safe_load(f)
values['global']['secret'] = 'password'
values['random-chart']['secret-1'] = 'password1'
with open('values.out.yaml', 'w') as f:
yaml.dump(values. f)
Two other possibilities to consider: you can have multiple helm install -f options, so it's possible to write out a file with just the values you're adding, and those will be merged with other settings (you do not need to repeat the values from the chart's values.yaml file). Depending on your environment, you also may find it easier to dynamically write out JSON files, particularly if you don't need to re-read the base chart; setups like Jenkins or Javascript applications will have built-in JSON support, and valid JSON turns out to be valid YAML.

How to Reference an aliased map value in YAML

I have a feeling this isn't possible, but I have a snippet of YAML that looks like the following:
.map_values: &my_map
a: 'D'
b: 'E'
a: 'F'
section:
stage: *my_map['b']
I would like stage to have the value of E.
Is this possible within YAML? I've tried just about every incarnation of substitution I can think of.
Since there is a duplicate key in your mapping, which is not allowed
in YAML 1.2 (and should at least throw a warning in YAML 1.1) this is
not going to work, but even if you correct that, you can't do that
with just anchors and aliases.
The only substitution like replacement that is available in YAML is the "Merge Key Language-Independent Type". That is indirectly referenced in the YAML spec, and not included in it, but available in most parsers.
The only thing that allows it to do is "update" a mapping with key value pairs of one or more other mappings, if the key doesn't already exist in the mapping. You use the special key << for that, which takes an alias, or a list of aliases.
There is no facility, specified in the YAML specification, to dereference particular keys.
There are some systems that use templates that generate YAML, but there are two main problems to apply these here:
the template languages themselves often are clashing with the indicators in the YAML syntax,
making the template not valid YAML
even if the template could be loaded as valid YAML, and the values extracted that are needed to
update other parts of the template, you would need to parse the input twice (once to get the
values to update the template, then to parse the updated template). Given the potential
complexity of YAML and the relative slow speed of its parsers, this can be prohibitive
What you can do is create some tag (e.g. !lookup) and have its constructor interpret that node.
Since the node has to be valid YAML again you have to decide on whether to use a sequence or a mapping.
You'll have to include some special syntax for the values in both cases, and also for the key
(like the << used in merges) in the case of mappings.
In the examples I left out the spurious single quotes, depending on
your real values you might of course need them.
Example using sequence :
.map_values: &my_map
a: D
b: E
c: F
section: !Lookup
- *my_map
- stage: <b>
Example using mapping:
.map_values: &my_map
a: D
b: E
c: F
section: !Lookup
<<: *my_map
stage: <b>
Both can be made to construct the data on the fly (i.e. no past
loading processing of your data structure necessary). E.g. using Python and
the sequence "style" in input.yaml:
import sys
import ruamel.yaml
from pathlib import Path
input = Path('input.yaml')
yaml = ruamel.yaml.YAML(typ='safe')
yaml.default_flow_style = False
#yaml.register_class
class Lookup:
#classmethod
def from_yaml(cls, constructor, node):
"""
this expects a two entry sequence, in which the first is a mapping X, typically using
an alias
the second entry should be an mapping, for which the values which have the form <key>
are looked up in X
non-existing keys will throw an error during loading.
"""
X, res = constructor.construct_sequence(node, deep=True)
yield res
for key, value in res.items():
try:
if value.startswith('<') and value.endswith('>'):
res[key] = X[value[1:-1]]
except AttributeError:
pass
return res
data = yaml.load(input)
yaml.dump(data, sys.stdout)
which gives:
.map_values:
a: D
b: E
c: F
section:
stage: E
There are a few things to note:
using <...> is arbitrary, you don't need a both beginning and an
end marker. I do recommend using some character(s) that has no
special meaning in YAML, so you don't need to quote your values. You can e.g. use some
well recognisable unicode point, but they tend to be a pain to type in an editor.
when from_yaml is called, the anchor is not yet fully constructed. So X is an empty dict
that gets filled later on. The constructed with yield implements a two step process: we first
give back res "as-is" back to the constructor, then later update it. The constructor stage of
the loader knows how to handle this automatically when it gets the generator instead a "normal" value.
the try .. except is there to handle mapping values that are not strings (i.e. numbers, dates, boolean).
you can do substitutions in keys as well, just make sure you delete the old key
Since tags are standard YAML, the above should be doable one way or another in any
YAML parser, independent of the language.

What kind of data structure will be best for storing a key-value pair where the value will be a String for some key and a List<String> for some keys?

For example, key 1 will have values "A","B","C" but key 2 will have value "D". If I use
Map<String, List<String>>
I need to populate the List<String> even when I have only single String value.
What data structure should be used in this case?
Map<String,List<String>> would be the standard way to do it (using a size-1 list when there is only a single item).
You could also have something like Map<String, Object> (which should work in either Java or presumably C#, to name two), where the value is either List<String> or String, but this would be fairly bad practice, as there are readability issue (you don't know what Object represents right off the bat from seeing the type), casting happens during runtime, which isn't ideal, among other things.
It does however depend what type of queries you plan to run. Map<String,Set<String>> might be a good idea if you plan of doing existence checks in the List and it can be large. Set<StringPair> (where StringPair is a class with 2 String members) is another consideration if there are plenty of keys with only 1 mapped value. There are plenty of solutions which would be more appropriate under various circumstances - it basically comes down to looking at the type of queries you want to perform and picking an appropriate structure according to that.

SuperCollider: convert a Dictionary to YAML

SuperCollider has a String:parseYAML method that can create a nested Dictionary:
"{44: 'woo'}".parseYAML
Dictionary[ (44 -> woo) ]
But how to go the other way, output a YAML string given a (possibly nested) Dictionary?
[answer is from someone else outside]
Does the document have to be readable?
I've ben using JSON.stringify from Felix's API quark In order to share dictionaries with an Max MSP application.
The result from this method is not readable, that is, it doesn't generate any newlines and tabs etc. So it doesn look pretty in a text document, but that's not the intention with method design I can imagine.

Is there a way to alias/anchor an array in YAML?

I'm using Jammit to package assets up for a Rails application and I have a few asset files that I'd like to be included in each of a few groups. For example, I'd like Sammy and its plugins to be in both my mobile and screen JS packages.
I've tried this:
sammy: &SAMMY
- public/javascripts/vendor/sammy.js
- public/javascripts/vendor/sammy*.js
mobile:
<<: *SAMMY
- public/javascripts/something_else.js
and this:
mobile:
- *SAMMY
but both put the Sammy JS files in a nested Array, which Jammit can't understand. Is there a syntax for including the elements of an Array directly in another Array?
NB: I realize that in this case there are only two elements in the SAMMY Array, so it wouldn't be too bad to give each an alias and reference both in each package. That's fine for this case, but quickly gets unmaintainable when there are five or ten elements that have a specific load order.
Closest solution I know of is this one:
sammy:
- &SAMMY1
public/javascripts/vendor/sammy.js
- &SAMMY2
public/javascripts/vendor/sammy*.js
mobile:
- *SAMMY1
- *SAMMY2
- public/javascripts/something_else.js
Alternatively, as already suggested, flatten the nested lists in a code snippet.
Note: according to yaml-online-parser, your first suggestion is not a valid use of << (used to merge keys from two dictionaries. The anchor then has to point to another dictionary I believe.
If you want mobile to be equal to sammy, you can just do:
mobile: *SAMMY
However if you want mobile to contain other elements in addition to those in sammy, there's no way to do that in YAML to the best of my knowledge.
Your example is valid YAML (a convenient place to check is YPaste), but it's not defined what the merge does. Per the spec, a merge key can have a value:
A mapping, in which case it's merged into the parent mapping.
A sequence of mappings, in which case each is merged, one-by-one, into the parent mapping.
There's no way of merging sequences on YAML level.
You can, however, do this in code. Using the YAML from your second idea:
mobile:
- *SAMMY
you'll get nested sequences - so flatten them! Assuming you have a mapping of such nested sequences:
data = YAML::load(File.open('test.yaml'))
data.each_pair { |key, value| value.flatten! }
(Of course, if you have a more complicated YAML file, and you don't want every sequence flattened (or they're not all sequences), you'll have to do some filtering.)
This solution is for Symfony/PHP only (considerations for other languages, see below)
Note about array keys from the PHP array manual page:
Strings containing valid decimal ints, unless the number is preceded by a + sign, will be cast to the int type. E.g. the key "8" will actually be stored under 8. [...]
This means that if you actually index your anchor array with integer keys, you can simply add new keys by continuing the initial list. So your solution would look like this:
sammy: &SAMMY
1: public/javascripts/vendor/sammy.js
2: public/javascripts/vendor/sammy*.js
mobile:
<<: *SAMMY
3: public/javascripts/something_else.js
You can even overwrite keys and still add new ones:
laptop:
<<: *SAMMY
1: public/javascripts/sammy_laptop.js
3: public/javascripts/something_else.js
In both cases the end result is a perfectly valid indexed array, just like before.
Other programming languages
Depending on your YAML implementation and how you iterate over your array, this could conceivably also be used in other programming languages. Though with a caveat.
For instance, in JS you can access numerical string keys by their integer value as well:
const sammy = {"1": "public/javascripts/vendor/sammy.js"}
sammy["1"]; // "public/javascripts/vendor/sammy.js"
sammy[1]; // "public/javascripts/vendor/sammy.js"
But you'd need to keep in mind, that your initial array is now an object, and that you would need to iterate over it accordingly, e.g.:
Object.keys(sammy).forEach(key => console.log(sammy[key]))
As it has been suggested, when you need to flatten a list, at least in ruby, it is trivial to add a "!flatten" type specifier to mobile and implement a class that extends Array, adds the yaml_tag and flattens the coder seq on init_with.

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