Simple Structured Markup (SSM)

simple_structured_markup is a lightweight Python library for reading and writing files in the Simple Structured Markup (SSM) format, a minimal data format similar to INI with support for grouping values. The library provides an easy-to-use API similar to Python’s built-in json module.

Features

• Parse .ssm files into Python dictionaries
• Serialize dictionaries into .ssm formatted strings
• Group values using [group] headers
• Supports integers and strings
• Comment lines with #

Installation

Install the library directly from PyPI:

pip install simple_structured_markup

Usage

The library provides functions load, loads, dump, and dumps similar to Python’s json module.

1. Parsing SSM Strings

import simple_structured_markup as ssm

ssm_data = """
# General information
title = "My Application"
version = 1

# Database configuration
[database]
host = "localhost"
port = 5432
"""

data = ssm.loads(ssm_data)
print(data)

Output:

{
    "title": "My Application",
    "version": 1,
    "database": {
        "host": "localhost",
        "port": 5432
    }
}

2. Writing SSM Strings

data = {
    "title": "My Application",
    "version": 1,
    "database": {
        "host": "localhost",
        "port": 5432
    }
}

ssm_string = ssm.dumps(data)
print(ssm_string)

Output:

title = "My Application"
version = 1

[database]
host = "localhost"
port = 5432

3. Reading and Writing SSM Files

Writing to a File

data = {
    "title": "My Application",
    "version": 1,
    "database": {
        "host": "localhost",
        "port": 5432
    }
}

with open("config.ssm", "w") as file:
    ssm.dump(data, file)

Reading from a File

with open("config.ssm", "r") as file:
    config = ssm.load(file)
    print(config)

Format Specification

• Comments start with # and are ignored by the parser.
• Group values by placing [group] before key-value pairs.
• Values can be integers or strings (strings must be enclosed in double quotes).

Example SSM Format:

# General information
title = "My Application"
version = 1

# Grouped values for database configuration
[database]
host = "localhost"
port = 5432

License

This project is licensed under the GPL-3.0 License.

Contributing

Feel free to open issues and submit pull requests on the GitHub repository.

Happy parsing! 🎉