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Primusville · Aug 17th, 2007, 3:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Game_Ender

You don't really have to use XML. You just need a structured data format you could use Json with the Python
simplejson library.

Here is a usage example:

 python Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
import simplejson
 
# file mycards.txt
# {
# "Blue Eyes White Dragon" : {
#     "hitpoints"  : 1202020
#     "attacks" :  ["Fire Spin", "Tail Whip"]
#     }
# }
 
mycards = file("mycards.txt")
myData = simplejson.load(mycards.read())
hitpoints = myData["Blue Eyes White Dragon"]["hitpoints"]
import simplejson

# file mycards.txt
# {
# "Blue Eyes White Dragon" : {
#     "hitpoints"  : 1202020
#     "attacks" :  ["Fire Spin", "Tail Whip"]
#     }
# }

mycards = file("mycards.txt")
myData = simplejson.load(mycards.read())
hitpoints = myData["Blue Eyes White Dragon"]["hitpoints"]

XML might be a good data interchange format, but its pretty verbose, and a pain to work with by hand compared to Json and Yaml. The key is, there is no "parsing" with Json or Yaml. They are already in dict + list format. The data structure in the file exactly maps to python. No hoop jumping or awkward APIs.

Thank you! That's just what I was looking for. At first XML seemed like a great idea, but then I realized the unnecessary difficulty of parsing it in Python. Thanks again for the help; now I think that I can finally get to work on my game.

Edit: I installed simplejson, and it's completely PERFECT for what I need. It works just as well as I hoped it would. Thanks once again for your assistance.