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.

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

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.
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.
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

Parse a file:

cargo run -- <input_file> <output_file>

Example:

cargo run input.txt output.json

Display credits:
```
cargo run -- --credits
```
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 (karpinskyimaksym@gmail.com)

License

MIT License

board_game_parser 0.1.0