Hello Python-ideas, I am working with lots of JSON objects in my work and need to obtain JSON pointers to particular components of a JSON object. These pointers are defined as part of the JSON-LD specifications as relative IRIs and as part of the JSON-Schema specifications. However, I am not aware of these pointers being part of the JSON specification. The pointers are really straightforward and follow the same syntax as other IRIs (URLs) or file paths. For example, the following flatten function illustrates the mapping of nested dictionaries and arrays to a single flat dictionary, where each nested key is mapped to a unique path. d = {"a": 1, "b": {"ba": 2, "bb": [{"bba": 3, "bbb": None}]}} flatten(d)
{'a': 1, 'b/ba': 2, 'b/bb/0/bba': 3, 'b/bb/0/bbb': None}
Not only does this conversion help in generating JSON pointers, but it helps with logic for nested data structures. Specifically, assume there is a dictionary, which includes nested dictionaries, lists, and tuples, and any of these elements are contained within another dictionary or that other dictionaries elements. Then it is not sufficient to simply compare the items of the two dictionaries to check whether the first is a subset of the other. However, the flat structures can be compared directly. 1. A nested dictionary is a subset of another nested dictionary. The flatten function ensures the nested dictionaries are not checked for equivalence but subset of. # Current {"a": 1, "c": {"d": 4}}.items() <= {"a": 1, "b": 2, "c": {"d": 4, "e": 5}}.items()
False # Proposed flatten({"a": 1, "c": {"d": 4}}).items() <= flatten({"a": 1, "b": 2, "c": {"d": 4, "e": 5}}).items() True
2. A nested list or tuple is a subset of a dictionary. # Current {"a": 1, "c": [3]}.items() <= {"a": 1, "b": 2, "c": [3,3]}.items()
False # Proposed flatten({"a": 1, "c": [3]}).items() <= flatten({"a": 1, "b": 2, "c": [3,3]}).items() True
Note that these examples only have one level of nesting, but the flatten function must handle any level of nesting. For the current version of the flatten function, I essentially borrowed the JSON "dumps" source code. However, the dumps code doesn't utilize any other functions and I believe there may be a missing "nestedIter" function in python. This function could be used for JSON dumps or flatten or anytime someone wants to visit all nested elements of a dictionary and perform some operation. Therefore, I think this function could be included in the JSON library if python-ideas thinks that the pointers are very specific to JSON or the itertools library, where the nested iteration function could be generally used for all nested data types. Let me know what you think of this proposal and I am looking forward to your responses. Best, Sven