Board Game Parser

Overview

The Board Game Parser is a Rust-based utility designed to parse structured information about board games and convert it into a serialized JSON format. This tool processes text files containing data about board games and extracts details such as the game's name, author, age suitability, playtime, player count, and price.

Links

• Documentation on docs.rs
• Crate on crates.io

Features

• Parses text files with structured board game data.
• Outputs data as a JSON file.
• Supports flexible input with various whitespace formatting.

Parsing Details

Input Format

The parser expects an input file with the following structure:

Name: <game name>
Author: <author name>
Age: <minimum age>
Time: <minimum time>-<maximum time>
Players: <minimum players>-<maximum players>
Price: <price> <currency>

• Name: The name of the board game.
• Author: The creator or publisher of the game.
• Age: Minimum age requirement for the game.
• Time: Expected playtime, with optional range (e.g., 30-60 minutes).
• Players: Minimum and maximum player count.
• Price: Cost of the game, with optional currency (UAH, USD, EUR).

Example:

Name: Chess
Author: Unknown
Age: 6
Time: 10-60
Players: 2
Price: 20 USD

Parsing Process

1. Grammar Definition: The grammar is defined in grammar.pest using the Pest parser. It uses rules for:

   • Capturing sections such as Name, Author, Age, etc.
   • Handling optional whitespace and ranges.

2. Data Extraction: The parser tokenizes input based on these rules and extracts relevant fields. Each game entry is represented as a Pair object in Pest, which is then converted to a Game struct using the from_pair method.

3. Serialization: The extracted data is serialized into JSON format using the Serde library.

Output Format

The resulting JSON file contains an array of board games, each represented as an object with the following structure:

[
  {
    "name": "Chess",
    "author": "Unknown",
    "age": 6,
    "min_time": 10,
    "max_time": 60,
    "min_players": 2,
    "max_players": null,
    "price": 20.0
  }
]

Usage

Commands

1. Parse a file:

   cargo run -- <input_file> <output_file>

   Example:

   cargo run input.txt output.json

2. Display credits:

   cargo run -- --credits

3. Display help:

   cargo run -- --help

Examples

• Input file:

  Name: Catan
  Author: Klaus Teuber
  Age: 10
  Time: 60-120
  Players: 3-4
  Price: 30 USD
  

• Command:

  cargo run input.txt output.json

• Output file (output.json):

  [
    {
      "name": "Catan",
      "author": "Klaus Teuber",
      "age": 10,
      "min_time": 60,
      "max_time": 120,
      "min_players": 3,
      "max_players": 4,
      "price": 30.0
    }
  ]

Technical Details

This project leverages:

• Pest: For defining the parsing grammar and tokenizing input.
• Serde: For serialization and deserialization of parsed data.
• Anyhow: For improved error handling.

Author

• Maksym Karpinskyi ([email protected])

License

MIT License