anymarkup
=========

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Parse or serialize any markup. Currently supports ini, json, json5, toml, xml and yaml.
Report bugs and new functionality requests at https://github.com/bkabrda/anymarkup/issues.

Parsing::

  >>> import anymarkup
  >>> anymarkup.parse('foo: bar')
  {'foo': 'bar'}
  >>> anymarkup.parse_file('foo/bar.ini')
  {'section': {'subsection': {'opt2': 'bar'}, 'opt1': 'foo'}}

  $ cat foo/bar.ini
  [section]
  opt1=foo
  [[subsection]]
  opt2=bar

Serializing::

  >>> import anymarkup
  >>> anymarkup.serialize({'foo': 'bar'}, 'json')
  b'{\n  "foo": "bar"\n}'
  >>> anymarkup.serialize_file({'foo': 'bar'}, 'foo/bar.json')

  $ cat foo/bar.json
  {
    "foo": "bar"
  }

``anymarkup`` is licensed under BSD license. You can download official releases
from https://pypi.python.org/pypi/anymarkup or install them via ``pip install anymarkup``.

``anymarkup`` works with Python 2.7 and >= 3.3.

Automatic Markup Language Recognition
-------------------------------------

When using ``anymarkup.parse(input)``, anymarkup will try to guess markup language of input.
This usually works fine except:

* ini vs toml: These two look almost the same and in fact have common subset (which,
  however, yields different parsing result). Because of this, anything with an ini-like
  look will be parsed with ini parser. If you want an input string to be parsed as toml,
  you have to explicitly specify that using ``format=toml`` (see below for examples).
* json vs json5: json5 is superset of json, but not very widely used. Because of practicality
  of json usage, everything that looks like json is parsed as json. If you want input string
  to be parsed as json5, you have to explicitly specify that using ``format=json5``.

When using ``anymarkup.parse_file(path)``, anymarkup will try to guess format based on file
extension and then fallback to guessing as explained above. This means that if the file has
``.toml`` pr ``.json5`` extension, you don't have to provide ``format=<format>`` explicitly.

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``. Finally,
you can also use ``force_types=None`` to get whatever the parsing backend returned::

  >>> anymarkup.parse('a: 1')
  {'a': 1}
  >>> anymarkup.parse('a: 1', force_types=False)
  {'a': '1'}
  >>> anymarkup.parse('a: 1', force_types=None)
  {'a': 1}


CLI
--------
To install the CLI, run the following command:

  pip install anymarkup

Example of conversion from JSON to XML:

  anymarkup convert --from-format json --to-format xml <somefile.json

For full help on the CLI run the following commands:

  anymarkup --help
  anymarkup convert --help


Backends
--------

``anymarkup`` uses:

- https://pypi.python.org/pypi/configobj/ for ``ini`` parsing
- https://docs.python.org/library/json.html for ``json`` parsing
- https://pypi.python.org/pypi/toml/ for ``toml`` parsing
- https://pypi.python.org/pypi/xmltodict for ``xml`` parsing
- https://pypi.python.org/pypi/PyYAML for ``yaml`` parsing

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.


Notes on Dependencies
---------------------

Read this section if you want anymarkup functionality only for subset of supported
markup languages without the need to install all parsers.

Since version 0.5.0, anymarkup is just a wrapper library around anymarkup-core
(https://github.com/bkabrda/anymarkup-core) and doesn't actually contain any code,
except of imports from anymarkup-core.

anymarkup-core goal is to not explicitly depend on any of the parsers, so people
can install it with only a specified subset of dependencies. For example, you can
install anymarkup-core only with PyYAML, if you know you'll only be parsing YAML.

If you install anymarkup, you will always get a full set of dependencies
and you will be able to parse any markup language that's supported.

The CLI requires click as indicated in the requirements.txt file.

Examples
--------

Parsing examples::

  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::

  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')