YAML Built-ins

ZPy provides built-in functions for YAML parsing and serialization.

Functions

yaml_parse(string)

Parse a YAML string into a ZPy value.

yaml_text = "name: Alice\nage: 30\nactive: true"
data = yaml_parse(yaml_text)
print(data["name"])  # Alice

Supported YAML features:

• Scalars: strings, numbers, booleans, null
• Sequences (lists) using - prefix
• Mappings (dicts) using key: value
• Nested structures via indentation
• Comments (#)
• Multi-document support (---)
• Anchors and aliases (&anchor, *alias)

yaml_parse_all(string)

Parse multi-document YAML into a list.

yaml_multi = """---
name: Doc1
---
name: Doc2
"""
docs = yaml_parse_all(yaml_multi)
print(len(docs))  # 2
print(docs[0]["name"])  # Doc1

yaml_stringify(value)

Convert a ZPy value to YAML string.

obj = {"name": "Bob", "age": 25}
yaml_text = yaml_stringify(obj)
# Result:
# name: Bob
# age: 25

Examples

Nested Structures

yaml_text = """
user:
  name: Alice
  skills:
    - Python
    - Zig
    - Go
"""
data = yaml_parse(yaml_text)
print(data["user"]["name"])  # Alice
print(data["user"]["skills"])  # ["Python", "Zig", "Go"]

Configuration Files

config_yaml = file_read(__dir__ + "/config.yml")
config = yaml_parse(config_yaml)

print("Debug mode:", config["debug"])
print("Port:", config["server"]["port"])

Anchors and Aliases

yaml_text = """
defaults: &defaults
  timeout: 30
  retries: 3

production:
  <<: *defaults
  debug: false

development:
  <<: *defaults
  debug: true
"""
config = yaml_parse(yaml_text)

Lists

yaml_list = """
- item1
- item2
- item3
"""
items = yaml_parse(yaml_list)
for item in items:
    print(item)

Write YAML File

config = {
    "app": {
        "name": "MyApp",
        "version": "1.0.0"
    },
    "features": ["auth", "api", "admin"]
}

yaml_text = yaml_stringify(config)
file_write("config.yml", yaml_text)

Type Mapping

YAML	ZPy
null, ~	none
true, yes, on	true
false, no, off	false
Integer	integer
Float	float
String	string
Sequence	list
Mapping	dict

Limitations

• Flow style collections ([a, b], {a: b}) not supported
• Complex keys not supported
• Tags (!tag) not supported