Specifications for DiscreteZOO objects

This repository contains JSON files defining the specifications of objects used in DiscreteZOO. The specifications are shared by both the core and the Sage interface.

File format

Each file is named for the class of the object that it specifies and has a .json extension indicating its format. It contains an object with the following fields:

• name: the name of the table conatining instances of the class;
• primary_key: the name of the property acting as the primary key;
• indices: a list of any of the following:
  • a name of a property to be indexed,
  • a list with two elements:
    • a name of a property of a list of names of properties to be indexed, and
    • a list of constraints on the index (currently only "unique" is supported);
• skip: a list of names of properties to be left out from the object dictionary (e.g. construction data);
• noupdate: a list of names of properties which should not be automatically updated;
• fields: an object with a field for each property, having one of the following values:
  • a data type ("Integer", "Rational", "RealNumber", "bool", "str" or any of the DiscreteZOO classes), or
  • an object with the following fields:
    • class: the name of the metaclass to be used,
    • params: an object with named parameters to the specified metaclass, each having as value an object of the same form as the fields field of the toplevel object,
    • the fields indices, skip, noupdate, fieldparams, aliases, compute or default as in the toplevel object;
• fieldparams: an object containing a list of parameters ("autoincrement", "not_null", "unique") for each property (empty lists need not be specified);
• aliases: an object with aliases for properties,
• compute: an object containing a list of properties for each superclass which are computed upon creation of a new DiscreteZOO object (empty lists need not be specified);
• condition: an object containing an object with required values of properties for each superclass (empty objects need not be specified).
• default: an object containing an object with default values of properties for each superclass (empty objects need not be specified).