lsf-lions-sectioned-format 2021.6.29

Read/write LSF plain-text container format files

lsf

LSF (Lion's Sectioned Format) is a plain-text container format.

It features:

• header & content sections
• titles for all sections (except the header)
• key-value pairs for all sections (optionally)
• body text for each section (optionally)

LSF files are always UTF-8 encoded.

Installing

pip install lsf-lions-sectioned-format

An example LSF File

title: My Blog
tags: blog

This is my blog.

== 2021-01-20 ==
tags: blogpost datepage github
date: 2021-01-20

Today I uploaded my lsf module to PyPI.

== 2021-01-18 ==
tags: blogpost datepage holiday
date: 2021-02-10

Today was Martin Luther King Day.

This file has a header section, and two content sections (2021-01-20, 2021-01-18). All sections have keys and body text content.

Example of Use

Here's reading an LSF file:

import lsf

L = lsf.loadfile("basic_blog.lsf")

for section in L:
    print(section[lsf.TITLE])
    print("  " + section[lsf.KEYS].get("tags"))
    print("  " + str(len(section[lsf.BODY])) + " characters in body")

And adding a section:

lsf.append(L, "A Title", {"date": "2021-01-19", "tags": "test"}, "This is a new entry.")

And saving to the file:

lsf.savefile(L, "basic_blog.lsf")

Section Dictionaries

Each section has a dictionary of the form:

{TITLE: "...a title...",
 TITLELN: 10,
 KEYS: {"key1": "value 1", "key2": "value 2", ...},
 BODY: "Central\nBody\nText\n",
 BODYLN: 16}

...which corresponds to section:

10. == ...a title... ==
11. key1: value 1
12. key2: value 2
    ...
15. 
16. Central
17. Body
18. Text

(The line numbers are not part of the source; They are supplied only so that you can see how TITLELN and BODYLN function.)

It's safe to manipulate data in place.