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Dump headers of parent nested tables

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#447 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
38/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
python
Domain
tooling

Research direction

Start at the tomlkit.dumps(my_dict) entry point and compare its current output with the requested parent-table headers. Determine how the desired formatting could be exposed, then verify the nested apps.test.whatever_1 and apps.test.whatever_2 tables retain their headers and indentation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Hello,

  1. I was trying to convert this python dictionnary

    my_dict = {
    "apps": {
        "test": {
            "whatever_1": {
                "date": "2025-12-16",
            },
            "whatever_2": {
                "date": "2025-12-16",
            },
        },
    },
}

    ...to this TOML output:

    [apps]
    [apps.test]
        [apps.test.whatever_1]
        date = "2025-12-16"
        [apps.test.whatever_2]
        date = "2025-12-16"

  2. I first had great hopes with:

    print(tomlkit.dumps(my_dict))

    but that outputs

    [apps.test.whatever_1]
date = "2025-12-16"

[apps.test.whatever_2]
date = "2025-12-16"

  3. With a bit of pain, I eventually manage to get the expected output using:

    my_dict_new = tomlkit.document()
for category_name, apps in my_dict.items():
    cat = tomlkit.table(False)
    for app_name, app_reports in apps.items():
        app = tomlkit.table(False).indent(4)
        for report_name, report_data in app_reports.items():
            rep = tomlkit.table(False).indent(4)
            for key, val in report_data.items():
                rep.add(key, val).indent(4) 
            app.append(report_name, rep)
        cat.append(app_name, app)
    my_dict_new.append(category_name, cat)

print(tomlkit.dumps(my_dict_new))

As this the reverse scenario from #47 and #107 in which the target output here seemed to be the default .dumps() output at the time, I wonder whether there would be a quicker way to access the old behavior again (i.e. dump headers for parent nested headers) ?

Dominant language
Python
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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