permissive-dict 1.0.0

Dictionary with loose rules for finding keys.

PermissiveDict

Dictionary class with loose rules for returning an attribute or a requested key value.

Note: may resort to iterating the dict values to find the matching requested key, so is potentially slow.

Key is first directly found using the exact key, and then loose rules are used.

Rules:

1. Keys compared without regard to case.

2. Spaces, underscores, full-stops and dashes are equivalent in a requested key.

3. Requested key is converted to str and stripped for wild card searching.

4. Items in the list can be retrieved by, get, attribute_access, call or array requested_key.

5. First matching element is returned.

6. Default of '' is used instead of dict standard None or raising KeyError

7. Multiple keys can be supplied separated with , (comma)

    Example:
    a = permissive_dict({'A': 1, 'A B': 2, 'b': 3, 4: 4})
    a.get('A_b') == a['a_b'] == a['A b'] == a['A_B'] a['a-b '] == a.a_b == a.A_b == a('a-b')
   
    a.get('blue,4') == 4
   
    a.get('4') == a[4] == a(4) == a('4')
   

Items with multiple wildcard keys matching in the dictionary will return the first item found.