Items

An item is the basic unit of data processing in Catmandu. Items are data structures build of key-value-pairs (aka objects), lists (aka arrays), strings, numbers, and null-values. All items can be expressed in JSON and YAML, among other formats. The following item consists of one object with two keys.

Serialized in JSON:

{
  "author": "Goldman, Emma",
  "title": "Living My Life"
}

Serialized in YAML:

---
author: Goldman, Emma
title: Living My Life

Items are usually processed in sequences. For instance the JSON importer by default expects one JSON object on each line of input:

{ "author": "Gabriel, Mary", "title": "Notorious Victoria" }
{ "author": "Goldman, Emma", "title": "Living My Life" }

See Importers and Exporters for details how to read and write items sequentially (for instance in files) and Stores about methods for storing and random access (for instance in databases).