On Tue, 3 Sep 2019 at 13:38, None via Python-ideas <python-ideas@python.org> wrote:
> I really believe that a nested key retrieval mechanism should be a > first-class offering of the standard library. It is extremely common in the > Python ecosystem to find developers working with data sets comprised of > nested data structures. Serializing and deserializing JSON is one of the > most common functions developers do today, too. As this is a common task > being performed by hundreds of thousands of developers, wouldn't it better if > we had one canonical way to do it (in the spirit of PEP-20 and having one > obvious way to do things)? There's a PyPI package, glom (https://pypi.org/project/glom/) that appears to do what you are after, as well as a lot more. Maybe that is something you should look into. There's obviously a judgement call involved, but "not every 3-line function needs to be a builtin" (or by extension a stdlib function) is a common principle used here. In this case, any individual case is probably a simple 3-line function, but trying to write something flexible enough to cater for all (or even just most) of the endless variations of questions like "should it be an error if a nested item isn't a dictionary, or should that be treated as item not found?" is a significant undertaking, and it's likely difficult to come up with a usable design. So custom implementations, tailored to the needs of individual projects, seems like a good way to go (to me, at least). If someone (like the author of the glom package) finds a more general approach that solves a broad class of problems, making it a package on PyPI is a good next step. And if it turns out that the PyPI package becomes a clear example of "best of breed", and has stabilised to the point where the slow pace of change in the stdlib is acceptable, then it might be worth making into a stdlib function. Yes, it's a common enough requirement, but only in a broad sense (the details seem to differ each time). Paul _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/XUBNFRNSLFYPCC47W5PFEIEMVU2FGVSM/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
