How can we get all the values of available keys within Yaml file which has deep hierarchy. Also, If I just need to get all the keys available.

[Coding-With-Ashish]

If I do not have idea about how many keys or with what hierarchy keys could be present in YAML , is it possible to write a generic method which fetches all the keys and values available with in yaml file given of any structure.

[EdwardCooke]

When you deserialize the yaml without specifying the object type it looks like it comes back as a Dictionary<object, object>. Where the key object is actually a string. The value part of that dictionary is either the value or another Dictionary<object, object>.

Here's some code that will dump out all of the keys in a yaml file of an arbitrary format:

using YamlDotNet.Benchmark;
using YamlDotNet.Serialization;

var deserializer = new DeserializerBuilder().Build();
var o = deserializer.Deserialize(new StringReader(@"
a:
  b:
    hello: world
  c:
    i: am
    a: martian
"))!;

var allKeys = GetKeys((Dictionary<object, object>)o, string.Empty);

foreach (var key in allKeys)
{
    Console.WriteLine(key);
}

string[] GetKeys(Dictionary<object, object> values, string path)
{
    var keys = new List<string>();
    foreach (var kvp in values)
    {
        if (kvp.Value is Dictionary<object, object> x)
        {
            keys.AddRange(GetKeys((Dictionary<object, object>)kvp.Value, $"{path}:{kvp.Key}"));
        }
        else
        {
            keys.Add($"{path}:{kvp.Key}={kvp.Value}");
        }
    }
    return keys.ToArray();
}

Result:

:a:b:hello=world
:a:c:i=am
:a:c:a=martian

Hopefully that helps.

[EdwardCooke]

Closing. Reopen this if you still need help.

[gius]

When you deserialize the yaml without specifying the object type it looks like it comes back as a Dictionary<object, object>. Where the key object is actually a string.

Is it possible to make it Dictionary<string, object> by default?

[EdwardCooke]

The key doesn’t have to be a string. It can be an actual object as well. The yaml spec doesn’t require it to be a scalar.

[gius]

Oh, I understand. And is there a way to manually configure a particular deserializer to convert the Dictionary<object, object> to a string-keyed one? I've tried a custom IYamlTypeConverter, but it is too low-level.

Edit: it seems that a custom INodeDeserializer registered instead of DictionaryNodeDeserializer is the solution.

Thank you guys for this great library!

[ohads-MSFT]

When you deserialize the yaml without specifying the object type it looks like it comes back as a Dictionary<object, object>. Where the key object is actually a string. The value part of that dictionary is either the value or another Dictionary<object, object>.

Reference (and slight correction) for this: #332 (comment)