yaml-kit 0.0.1

A package for creating and modifying YAML files.

YAML-kit

Customizable, extensible, and version-aware YAML configuration.

Description

yaml-kit is a programmatic way to generate and validate YAML config files with custom, user-defined logic. It supports comments, type checking, and git integration so you always know that your files are valid for your use case, and you can check how parameter values have changed through code iterations.

Requirements

• ruamel.yaml
• colorama

Installation

pip install yaml-kit

Usage

At a high level, yaml-kit helps you generate and read YAML files. It always starts with creating a .py file to define the parameters. This file always has the same basic structure:

from yaml_kit import Config, get_and_run_config_command

config = Config("MyConfig")

# config logic goes here

if __name__ == "__main__":
    get_and_run_config_command(config)

Config is the abstract class in which you will define your parameters. It has a name (here "MyConfig") and built-in methods for saving, loading, printing, etc.

Defining Parameters

Once you have instantiated a Config instance, you need to define your parameters. Parameters are basically key: value pairs with some extra logic to make them easier to use than a basic dict. Parameters are also organized into groups, and each group can have an arbitrary number of subgroups.

A parameter definition is a function, named as you would the parameter, decorated with @config.parameter decorator. The decorator takes the following optional arguments:

• group (str): the parameter group. Subgroups are specified using dot syntax, e.g., "Group.Subgroup.Subsubgroup".
• default (any): the default value for this parameter. This value will be filled in automatically when generating a template config.
• types (type or tuple of types): accepted datatype for this parameter.
• deprecated (bool): If True, raise a DepracationWarning for this parameter.

Additionally, docstrings in the parameter function are saved and rendered in the YAML. For example,

@config.parameter(group="Model.Encoder", default=1, types=int)
def num_layers(val):
    """
    The number of linear layers in the encoder.
    """
    assert val >= 1

will generate the YAML

Model:
  Encoder:
    # The number of linear layers in the encoder.
    num_layers: 1

The validation logic in the parameter function can be as simple or complex as you wish. If you don't need any validation besides type-checking, a pass will suffice.

Load Hooks

The validation logic in the parameter functions is often sufficient. However, if you need to validate parameters against each other to ensure compatibility (e.g., you want the Model.Encoder.output_dim to match Model.Decoder.input_dim) you can use the @config.on_load decorator after all your parameter definitions. For example,

@config.on_load
def validate_parameters():
    assert Model.Encoder.output_dim == Model.Decoder.input_dim

Command Line Usage

Now that you've defined your config.py file with all your parameters and load hooks, you can use it on the command line like so.

$> python config.py new myconfig.yaml

You can now edit myconfig.yaml to your liking. It will already contain any default values you specified in your parameter functions.

Once you're happy with your config file, validate it with

$> python config.py validate myconfig.yaml

If nothing is printed, your config is valid according to your logic. You can also validate by pretty-printing the config file to the terminal.

$> python config.py print myconfig.yaml

In the course of your work, you may end up with a number of similar config files. You can batch update their parameters like so.

$> python config.py update -f configs/*.yaml -p "Model.Encoder.output_dim" 10 -p "Model.Decoder.input_dim" 10

In the command above -f specifies a list of files to edit and -p is a single parameter, new value pair to update. The original version of the file will be saved with a .yaml.orig extension in case you need to roll back your changes.

The update command also has basic support for string matching and substitution. The string {} in a parameter value will be replaced with the current value in the config file. For example, given the contents of config.yaml

Experiment:
  logdir: /home/user/experiments/logs

We can update logdir like so

$> python config.py update -f config.yaml -p "Experiment.logdir" "{}/test_experiment"

resulting in the following YAML

Experiment:
  logdir: /home/user/experiments/logs/test_experiment

API

Using your config in Python is simple. Assuming your config definition is saved as myconfig.py and the corresponding YAML is myconfig.yaml, you can do.

# Import your config instance. This contains all your parameter definitions,
# but no values besides any defaults you defined.
from myconfig import config

# Load your parameter values from the YAML file.
config.load_yaml("myconfig.yaml")

# Access parameter values directly
config.Model.Encoder.input_dim.value

# or iterate over groups and subgroups/parameters
for group in config:
    for subgroup_or_param in group:
        pass

# You can also convert to a dictionary
config.asdict()

Examples

See examples/.