Data Codecs

Codecs are used to encode and decode data to and from serialised text. The badger toolkit comes with two built-in codecs for json and yaml files. These are imported from the badger-codecs module.

Read Data Files

Suppose that you have a badger.yaml file that you want to read.

name:   Brian
animal: Badger

All you have to do is add the { codec: 'yaml' } option to the file() function. The read() method will then automatically decode the YAML text.

import { file } from '@abw/badger'

file('badger.yaml', { codec: 'yaml' })
  .read()
  .then(
    data => console.log(data.name, 'is a', data.animal)
  )

This prints the string Brian is a Badger to the console.

You can also do the same thing using the file() method on a directory object created using the dir() function.

import { dir } from '@abw/badger'

dir('data')
  .file('badger.yaml', { codec: 'yaml' })
  .read()
  .then(
    data => console.log(data.name, 'is a', data.animal)
  )

Write Data Files

The codec option also works when writing data.

import { file } from '@abw/badger'

file('giraffe.yaml', { codec: 'yaml' })
  .write({
    name:   "Gerald",
    animal: "Giraffe",
  })

You should now have a giraffe.yaml file containing the following:

name: Gerald
animal: Giraffe