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main.command.flatten.readme

Command overview for flatten.

Purpose

Convert structured data (currently XML, JSON, TOML, YAML, and CSV) into flat hierarchical records:

path = value

This gives a common intermediate format for downstream filtering, searching, and pipeline composition.

Supported inputs

  • XML (including .xml, .nuspec, .csproj, and related XML-family files)
  • JSON (.json, .jsonl)
  • TOML (.toml)
  • YAML (.yaml, .yml)
  • CSV (.csv)

Format detection is extension-based. You can override with --format xml|json|toml|yaml|csv.

Core usage

recur flatten config.xml
recur flatten data.json --json
recur flatten .recur/config.toml --format toml
recur flatten appsettings.yaml --format yaml
recur flatten levels.csv --format csv
recur flatten data.json --filter "config.database"
recur flatten data.json --max-depth 2
cat pom.xml | recur flatten --stdin --format xml

Use global --sep to control hierarchy delimiter in flattened paths:

recur --sep _ flatten config.json --json

Output shape

Text mode prints:

config.db.host = localhost
config.db.port = 5432

JSON mode prints an array:

[
  { "path": "config.db.host", "value": "localhost", "kind": "text" },
  { "path": "config.db.port", "value": "5432", "kind": "text" }
]

Notes:

  • XML attributes are emitted as path@attribute.
  • Repeated siblings/arrays are indexed like [0], [1].

merge compatibility (current)

recur merge can ingest flatten --json output because merge accepts JSON arrays of objects containing a path field.

Current limitations:

  • merge builds a file-style hierarchy and does not preserve flatten value or kind.
  • dot-separated flattened paths are lossy in merge output because merge interprets the last segment as a file extension.

Workaround for now:

recur --sep _ flatten source-a.xml --json > a.flat.json
recur --sep _ flatten source-b.json --json > b.flat.json
recur merge a.flat.json --sep _ b.flat.json --sep _ --base config

PowerShell stdin example:

@(
  (recur --sep _ flatten source-a.xml --json | Out-String),
  (recur --sep _ flatten source-b.json --json | Out-String)
) -join "`n" | recur merge --stdin --base config --sep _ --sep _