Best way to store this data?

I need to be able to store data formatted like this:

Code:

Factions:
[
Test1:[Leader: Test, Officers: [Me, You], Members: [Other, People]],
etc.,
etc.
]

What is the best data storage format (YAML,ENUM, etc.) and how should I go about storing/retrieving it? Thanks in advance!

 

Store it in a Config.yml (YAML). Or if u have a database use it.

 

Ok thanks

 

Question. How could one root associative array to the YAML when it is first made?

 

Ezpz,

PHP:

/** @var Config $config */
$assoc = [
    "Test" => [
        [
            1 => "Hello there",
            2 => Item::get(Item::STONE, 0, 16)
        ]
];

//Saving.
$config->set("assoc", $assoc);
$config->save();

//Retrieving
$array = $config->get("assoc");

//It's the same way you save / return strings.
//Most would go with serialization if the array is big (just to save time and memory, I could be wrong).

//Saving
$config->set("assoc", serialize($assoc));
$config->save();

//Retrieving
$array = $config->get("assoc");
$array = unserialize($array);


 

json is always better unless you wanna store bigger amount of data in the array.

 

I have no idea how much data will be stored by a server owner. However, now that I think about it, I doubt it would be large enough to need YAML.

 

Each thing has it's own purpose and I don't think YAML's purpose is to store data, I think it's more like an easily managable configuration file. For storaging stuff it is a better idea to use databases, for example: SQLITE3, MySQL, MySQLi, and many others to mention. If there isn't really much to store, you can save that data in a JSON compressed file.

 

Some people may not have access to a MySQL DB.

 

Well, not MySQL, but you can always use a SQLITE3 database. If you did not know, every pocketmine server comes with one of "those".

 

If you are storing strings, go with JSON.

When I used YAML, the line breaks did not save up whereas in JSON format, it did.

I mainly use .sl (Config::SERIALIZED) format as it maintains the original code.

Do not store serialized (serialize()) data in JSON. It is useless.
Use json_encode() and json_decode() instead of serialize() and unserialize() if you're going for JSON