Load YAML as nested objects instead of dictionary in Python

Question

I have a configuration file in YAML that is currently loaded as a dictionary using yaml.safe_load. For convenience in writing my code, I'd prefer to load it as a set of nested objects. It's cumbersome to refer to deeper levels of the dictionary and makes the code harder to read.

Example:

import yaml
mydict = yaml.safe_load("""
a: 1
b:
- q: "foo"
  r: 99
  s: 98
- x: "bar"
  y: 97
  z: 96
c:
  d: 7
  e: 8
  f: [9,10,11]
""")

Currently, I access items like

mydict["b"][0]["r"]
>>> 99

What I'd like to be able to do is access the same information like

mydict.b[0].r
>>> 99

Is there a way to load YAML as nested objects like this? Or will I have to roll my own class and recursively flip these dictionaries into nested objects? I'm guessing namedtuple could make this a bit easier, but I'd prefer an off-the-shelf solution for the whole thing.

Answer 1

Found a handy library to do exactly what I need: https://github.com/Infinidat/munch

import yaml
from munch import Munch
mydict = yaml.safe_load("""
a: 1
b:
- q: "foo"
  r: 99
  s: 98
- x: "bar"
  y: 97
  z: 96
c:
  d: 7
  e: 8
  f: [9,10,11]
""")
mymunch = Munch(mydict)

(I had to write a simple method to recursively convert all subdicts into munches but now I can navigate my data with e.g.

>>> mymunch.b.q
"foo"

Answer 2

Using a SimpleNamespace will work at the top level, but won't translate nested structures.

dct = yaml.safe_load(...)
obj = types.SimpleNamespace(**dct)

To achieve full object-tree translation:

def load_object(dct):
    return types.SimpleNamespace(**dct)

dct = yaml.safe_load(...)
obj = json.loads(json.dumps(dct), object_hook=load_object)