Chapter 14. Boost.PropertyTree

Chapter 14. Boost.PropertyTree
Marcin Kalicinski
Copyright © 2008 Marcin Kalicinski
Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)
Table of Contents

What is Property Tree?

Five Minute Tutorial

Property Tree as a Container

Property Tree Synopsis

How to Populate a Property Tree

XML Parser

JSON Parser

INI Parser

INFO Parser

How to Access Data in a Property Tree

Appendices

Reference

Header <boost/property_tree/exceptions.hpp>

Header <boost/property_tree/id_translator.hpp>

Header <boost/property_tree/info_parser.hpp>

Header <boost/property_tree/ini_parser.hpp>

Header <boost/property_tree/json_parser.hpp>

Header <boost/property_tree/ptree.hpp>

Header <boost/property_tree/ptree_fwd.hpp>

Header <boost/property_tree/ptree_serialization.hpp>

Header <boost/property_tree/stream_translator.hpp>

Header <boost/property_tree/string_path.hpp>

Header <boost/property_tree/xml_parser.hpp>
What is Property Tree?
The Property Tree library provides a data structure that stores an arbitrarily deeply nested tree of values, indexed at each level by some key. Each node of the tree stores its own value, plus an ordered list of its subnodes and their keys. The tree allows easy access to any of its nodes by means of a path, which is a concatenation of multiple keys.
In addition, the library provides parsers and generators for a number of data formats that can be represented by such a tree, including XML, INI, and JSON.
Property trees are versatile data structures, but are particularly suited for holding configuration data. The tree provides its own, tree-specific interface, and each node is also an STL-compatible Sequence for its child nodes.
Conceptually, then, a node can be thought of as the following structure:
struct ptree
{
   data_type data;                         // data associated with the node
   list< pair<key_type, ptree> > children; // ordered list of named children
};
Both key_type and data_type are configurable, but will usually be std::string.
Many software projects develop a similar tool at some point of their lifetime, and property tree originated the same way. We hope the library can save many from reinventing the wheel.
Last revised: November 14, 2009 at 10:40:12 GMT