Force-generating inline tables

[pastelmind]

I've been trying to explicitly generate inline tables for my data. After a bit of hacking, I discovered an interesting solution for v0.3.0:

from qtoml.encoder import TOMLEncoder
from collections import UserDict

hacked_encoder = TOMLEncoder()
hacked_encoder.st[UserDict] = hacked_encoder.dump_itable

data = {
    "my_data": {
        "inline_value": "this is a scalar",
        "inline_table": UserDict(
            {"this": "generates", "an": 10, "inline table": True}
        ),
        "separate_table": {"this": "creates", "another table": 42},
    }
}

print(hacked_encoder.dump_sections(data, [], False))

This yields:

[my_data]
inline_value = 'this is a scalar'
inline_table = { this = 'generates', an = 10, 'inline table' = true }

[my_data.separate_table]
this = 'creates'
'another table' = 42

The current implementation of TOMLEncoder.dump_sections() always renders dict as regular tables even if a dumper is assigned to TOMLEncoder.st. Since collections.UserDict is not a subclass of dict, it circumvents this issue.

I know this is fragile and unreliable. However, since qtoml doesn't expose a lot of options for rendering TOML, I thought it was worth sharing.

PS. It would be great to make this a feature by providing a qtoml.InlineTableDict class (which simply subclasses UserDict).

[alethiophile]

That's definitely an interesting workaround. I'll have to think about how best to provide an API for that, but your idea might well be the best way.