Flattens hierarchical JSON, XML, or YAML into a format suitable for loading into a database

Simply copy the appropriate modules, eg parse_object.py and unparse_object.py into your project.

Installation via setup.py or pip install is coming.

{
  "aaa": {"bbb": "ccc", 
          "ddd": "eee"}, 
  "fff": "ggg"
}

from src import parse

o = parse.object(i)

[
  {
    "parent_path": "/", 
    "path": "/aaa/"
  },
  {
    "parent_path": "/aaa/", 
    "path": "/aaa/bbb/", 
    "value": "ccc"
  },
  {
    "parent_path": "/aaa/", 
    "path": "/aaa/ddd/", 
    "value": "eee"
  },
  {
    "parent_path": "/", 
    "path": "/fff/", 
    "value": "ggg"
  },
]

• parse and unparse are perfectly inverse operations.

  • Specifically, parse(unparse(parse(S))) will EXACTLY equal parse(S)
  • unparse(parse(S)) will be equivalent to `S``, but may not be precisely equal for various reasons, including formatting

• Every parent_path field will be an exact match of the path field of some other element. The only exception is a parent_path of "/"

The stated invariants hold for all valid JSON unless:

• A dictionary key contains a "/" character. This is outside the domain that the transformation is defined on, and simply cannot work. parse will throw an exception when provided such a key, and unparse will never generate a dictionary with such a key

• A dictionary key is a string which can be validly converted to an integer via Python's int() function. IE "0", "1", "2", "000", etc. It will be correctly handled by parse, but will be converted to that integer by unparse, as the defined transformation loses that origin information, therefore breaking the invariant.

• The set of keys in a dictionary form a sequence of integers including 0 and increasing by one. This includes if they are the string versions. parse will handle these correctly, but unparse will convert them into lists, for the same reason given in the previous bullet

<Vehicles>
  <Vehicle>
    <Type>Red Scooter</Type>
  </Vehicle>
  <Vehicle>
    <Type>Red Scooter</Type>
  </Vehicle>
</Vehicles>

[
  {
    "attributes": {},
    "parent_path": "/",
    "path": "/Vehicles/",
    "tag": "Vehicles",
    "value": "",
  },
  {
    "attributes": {},
    "parent_path": "/Vehicles/",
    "path": "/Vehicles/Vehicle/0/",
    "tag": "Vehicle",
    "value": "",
  },
  {
    "attributes": {},
    "parent_path": "/Vehicles/Vehicle/0/",
    "path": "/Vehicles/Vehicle/0/Type/",
    "tag": "Type",
    "value": "Red Scooter",
  },
  {
    "attributes": {},
    "parent_path": "/Vehicles/",
    "path": "/Vehicles/Vehicle/1/",
    "tag": "Vehicle",
    "value": "",
  },
  {
    "attributes": {},
    "parent_path": "/Vehicles/Vehicle/1/",
    "path": "/Vehicles/Vehicle/1/Type/",
    "tag": "Type",
    "value": "Red Scooter",
  },
]

name:
  family: Smith
  given: John

[
  {
    "comments": [], 
    "parent_path": "/", 
    "path": "/name/"
  },
  {
    "parent_path": "/name/", 
    "path": "/name/family/", 
    "value": "Smith"
  },
  {
    "parent_path": "/name/", 
    "path": "/name/given/", 
    "value": "John"
  },
]
``