Support for tracking the box "namespace"

[JacobHayes]

I have some nested Boxes using an overridden __convert_and_store in a subclass to convert values to an expected type (eg: I want all values to be an int or some other custom class). For that conversion, I would like to know the "namespace" of the Box/value in order to reference it in the conversion and show nicer error messages.

For example, when handling the conversion of 5 in the example below:

box = MyBox({"a": {"b": {"c": 5}}})

I would like to know that I'm assigning to ("a", "b", "c").

This is quite hard to setup only in a subclass because of the recursive value conversion (and copying) during __init__ and conversion doesn't give a good hook to intercept after the box is created, but before sub-boxes are created.

I think the easiest way to support this is by adding a box_path or box_namespace param to __init__ (defaulting to ()) and then into _box_config, which can be passed through (and extended) in __get_default and __convert_and_store when creating sub-boxes.

Is this something you'd be open to? I'd be happy to make a PR for this if so!

[ipcoder]

Actually, I have a similar problem, though formulated a bit differently.
May be this angle could be useful for you as well.

I use Box heavily with box_dots, and find it convenient to think about keys as paths, and operate on them accordingly.

So I have sub-classed Box (to TBox) where box_dots=True by default, and added several enhancement useful for this mode.

First, I re-implemented __setitem__ to allow:

b = Box()
b['z.y.z'] = "Hi" 
# b == {'x': {'y': {'z': 1}}}

Such initializations are possible:

b = TBox({
    'x.y.z': 1,
    'x.y.w': 2,
    'x.m': 100,
    'x.n': {'k.p':200}
})

In general, I believe working with dots should be symmetrical for reading and writing.
Now a = b["x.y"'] reads b.x.y item, but b["x.y"] = a writes to a '"x.y"' key of b.

Implementation is rather straightforward and does not seem to conflict with the rest of Box functionality:

class TBox(Box):

   ...
    def __setitem__(self, key, value):
        if '.' in key:
            node, tail = key.split('.', 1)
            if node not in self:
                super().__setitem__(node, {})
            self[node].__setitem__(tail, value)
        else:
            super().__setitem__(key, value)

What do you think about making that default behavior in box_dots mode?
I saw several issues open on that, except of mine: #170, #214

I am also missing b.x.y.z = a which does not work without default_box=True , which itself is not really useful, due to issues like #236, #192 (also here comment #164 (comment)).

But before some solution for the default_box problem is found, b['x.y.z'] = a does a trick as the difference is mainly syntactic.

[nishikantparmariam]

I think the easiest way to support this is by adding a box_path or box_namespace param

+1 for this feature.

[JacobHayes]

I revived #227 as #240 for the box_namespace config.

[cdgriffith]

Adding this feature in Box 7! Please test and give feedback if possible pip install python-box[all]~=7.0.0rc0 (Thanks again @JacobHayes for the PR! )

[JacobHayes]

7.0.0rc0 nicely replaced my workarounds, fixing a couple bugs! Though, I did have some issues with some of the wheels.

[cdgriffith]

Added in 7.0.0