Support complex root structures

[shravan2x]

The KeyValues wiki states that statements like "#base" "panelBase.res" may be present in VDF files. Automatically executing import statements is out of scope for this library, but we should support these if possible. There may also be other root tokens like comments. One way to return these is as a IReadOnlyList<VToken>.

TODO:

• Are such "complex" root structures common? Do any users rely on hacks to solve this problem?
• Should this be a breaking change or an overload?

Will be nice to have a Deserialization with a nested structures like in the "libraryfolders.vdf" where you can have multiple places where to look for games installed.

"libraryfolders"
{
"contentstatsid" "-1467807043615334209"
"1"
{
"path" "D:\SteamLibrary"
"label" "Data"
"mounted" "1"
"contentid" "6724898736848565524"
}
"2"
{
"path" "E:\SteamLibrary"
"label" "Data"
"mounted" "1"
"contentid" "6724898736848565524"
}
}

In this case having a class for the whole content will be something like that:

public class LibraryFolders
{
    public string ContentStatsId { get; set; }

    public IEnumerable<LibraryFolderSpecification> libraryFoldersSpecifications = new List<LibraryFolderSpecification>();
}

public class LibraryFolderSpecification
{
    public string Path { get; set; }
    public string Label { get; set; }
    public int Mounted { get; set; }
    public UInt64 ContentId { get; set; }
}

So when we deserialize that content the objects will be automatically populated.

[shravan2x]

This is a tricky issue to solve as there isn't a way to check if the keys 1,2,... are elements of an array or proper keys by themselves. We could have an attribute on a list property that tells the library to put all array elements into it but that's quite a bit of work (since we currently rely on an intermediate JSON conversion step for model deserialization)

I think it may be best to do this logic using LINQ when you're sure it'll be an array:

VProperty root = VdfConvert.Deserialize(input);
JObject rootObj = (JObject) root.Value.ToJson();
LibraryFolders libraryFolders = new LibraryFolders
{
    ContentStatsId = rootObj["contentstatsid"]!.Value<string>()!,
    libraryFoldersSpecifications = Enumerable
        .Range(1, rootObj.Children<JProperty>().Select(x => x.Name).Where(x => Int32.TryParse(x, out _)).Select(x => Int32.Parse(x)).Max())
        .Select(x => rootObj[x.ToString()]!.ToObject<LibraryFolderSpecification>()!)
        .ToList()
};

This deserialized neatly as

[ZzZombo]

The KeyValues wiki states that statements like "#base" "panelBase.res" may be present in VDF files. Automatically executing import statements is out of scope for this library, but we should support these if possible. There may also be other root tokens like comments. One way to return these is as a IReadOnlyList<VToken>.

TODO:

• Are such "complex" root structures common? Do any users rely on hacks to solve this problem?
• Should this be a breaking change or an overload?

Sound scripts have multiple elements at the root scope, rather than one root element encompassing the rest.

[shravan2x]

@ZzZombo Could you share an example file?

[unquietwiki]

@shravan2x Hey there. Not sure you're working on this anymore, but figured I'd give a followup on the libraryfolders.vdf parsing. The code you had provided before didn't seem to work, and also doesn't immediately work on a .NET Framework 4.8.1 app (not C# 8 or later). I had Claude AI take a look at the file, and it constructed a working class and example parser; I don't think I had to edit the class code at all. Might be useful to others, or if you do revive work on this.

vdf_parser.cs.txt